


Tempered Hearts

by MaverickWerewolf



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Drabble, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Romance, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-02-07 08:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12837063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickWerewolf/pseuds/MaverickWerewolf
Summary: When stoic soldier Caiden Voros took Sadja Shielding under his wing as his new partner, he'd expected he was in for a handful. He could deal with that. And he can mostly deal with fighting dragons, fighting a god, and maybe even becoming a hero... But he isn't quite sure how to handle falling in love.





	1. Not Chickening Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of assorted drabbles based on roleplaying with [Taff](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tafferling/pseuds/Tafferling) in Guild Wars 2, which have built up to a much more emotionally investing point than originally anticipated. Sadja Shielding belongs to Taff, while Caiden Voros is mine. Both OCs, whom we play as in the game.
> 
> Be sure to check the notes on each chapter to find links to Taff's accompanying drabbles! They do go in an order.

Snow. Everywhere. Everything was freezing, and the sparse braziers emitted only enough heat to provoke memories of what warmth was supposed to feel like. The entire region was so cold that the damn ships were made out of icebergs, with wood – from somewhere, maybe imported? – haphazardly stuck around to form walls and walkways. Some big, messy sails poked up in various places, theoretically to make the ‘ship’ move. Although Sadja had never actually seen one of these _moving_. So why the hell were there sails on them?

Not that it was a concern at the moment. The only real concern right now was getting warm.

After running around freezing themselves to the bone all day, Sadja had found a decent enough place to try to get some rest. True, it was only a little corner of wood on the giant kodan (those were bear-people, by the way) iceberg-ship, but it was still warmer than anything covered in snow – which was, literally, everything else in the vicinity.

She had even found a big, thick fur to sleep under for an oversized blanket. The kodans didn’t have much use for that kind of thing, so she’d found one by poking around in a crate in a corner.

Glancing around, she decided Voros had backed down on their deal, after all, even after claiming he wouldn’t. And since all the kodans slept locked up in houses, she couldn’t mooch off their warmth instead.

Unceremoniously removing all her armor, overflowing bags, weapons, and assorted other gear, Sadja dumped it in a corner and rolled herself up in the fur. Maybe it would be warm enough, but probably not.

She started to doze, despite the cold, when something nudged her, and she awoke instantly. The recognizably large and muscle-bound form, one that definitely _didn’t_ belong to a bear-man, disturbed her arguably warm makeshift-bedroll-sanctuary.

“You’re late,” Sadja ribbed as Voros pulled the blanket back over them both, like an awkward sleeping bag. He’d even come shirtless, so Sadja wormed her way out of her own shirt and threw it somewhere else, too.

Voros grunted.

“Almost thought you’d chickened out,” she prompted. It was so hard to get a rise out of this guy, and thus all the more rewarding when it actually worked.

“Told you I wouldn’t,” he replied a bit flatly. He finally slid his thick arms around her, though she noted just how tense those big muscles were.

“Relax, Voros,” Sadja said, perhaps a bit groggily, though she did pointedly turn over to steal more of his warmth by resting her face near his chest. Well, and to make him even more uncomfortable, because it was a little funny the way he squirmed for half a second afterward.

He just grunted again, somewhere deep in the chest she lay against, the sound even vaguer this time.

“So, hey,” she wondered aloud through a yawn as one hand lazily tried to travel south along his body, finding more than a few scars along the way to his navel, “do you have pants on?”

“Get some sleep, Sadja,” Caiden rumbled just as tiredly, removing one hand from around her only long enough to direct hers back up north somewhere.

“Mh…”

“ _Mh_ ,” he echoed – teasingly, at least for him. She heard a hint of a smile in his tone. For once. No doubt there wasn’t a trace of it actually on his face.

Then she added, “If you snore, I’m finding a kodan.”

“No you’re not.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“It’s a fact.”

Sadja grinned. Voros sounded pretty sure of himself, and like he cared quite a bit if she went off to make her bed with some bear-person instead. But she was too tired to keep this up, so she settled for snuggling far closer to him than ever would be allowed, especially when there was virtually no clothing involved, by the social norms Voros seemed to hold in such high regard.

Apparently sensing her giving out, Caiden said with a finality that implied the phrase would seal the deal and make her fall asleep, “Good night, Sadja.”

“Good night, Snoros,” she replied, just before tucking her face somewhere between his neck and chest to make sure her nose didn’t freeze and fall off in the night. He really was very warm.

Just before she dozed off, as Voros had planned, she thought she felt him pull her even closer, so close she could have solved the question regarding his pants, and put his face against her head. But, at that point, it was hard to tell… given she was already asleep.


	2. Distracted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden loses himself in confusion over his growing feelings for Sadja.

He couldn’t sleep. The hard rocks under his back – or under his side, or his stomach, however he tried to lay – should’ve been what kept him awake. But it wasn’t. Caiden had slept on harder things. Worse things. And he’d slept in filthier places – more dangerous places.

No, it wasn’t anything like that. It was _her_.

He rolled over again, daring to peer at Sadja as she lay, maybe asleep, on the other side of the precarious perch where they slept: the top of some largely crumbled ruins, on a little platform of stone that reached straight up to the sky. It offered a good view of the entire fen, plus it was almost high enough you couldn’t quite smell it so strong.

She’d picked the spot. They had been here before, even slept here before. Felt almost like a long time ago now, after all they had been through. Together. That was the most important part.

Or was it?

Caiden had plenty of partners in the past. Students, even, if that was really the word for them. People he’d mentored, anyway. Watched, helped, guarded, guided – even if he sometimes found himself kept on track by them more than the alternative. It was hard to think of them as “students,” considering how capable they had all been already. Including her. _Especially_ her.

Dammit.

He was doing it again. Shifting in some vague discomfort with himself – or was it disappointment, or annoyance? – he turned over for perhaps the dozenth time tonight, looking out across the fen instead of at her. Caiden took a deep breath and then regretted it. Turned out you could still smell the swamp pretty strongly up here.

His fingers absently found his longbow – a recent acquisition, given he vastly preferred his sword and shield. A slime monster slid around not too far underneath him. The sound annoyed him, or at least it did right now, even as quiet as it was. It probably wouldn’t have at any other time.

So he took his bow in an unnecessarily iron grip, sat up, and reached for an arrow. Drawing it back, he squinted his eye – aiming with one eye was a bitch, it’d taken him years to get used to it – and loosed.

The arrow was enough to knock the ooze, now formed into a ridiculous little bouncing ball that made for a difficult target, straight off the edge of the ruins. It flew so he barely heard the splat, somewhere far below.

It didn’t help.

Caiden set his bow aside again, a guttural sigh rumbling in his chest. Now something was wrong with _him_ , too. He was used to worrying, and used to far worse things, but he could push everything aside in the face of his mission. Once he’d learned to compartmentalize, he had even learned how to sleep again. He’d been able to sleep for years, despite the things in his head. The sights, the smells, the sounds – things he couldn’t forget. All he had been through, fought through. Things that still haunted him.

Including the people he used to worry about. Most of them were gone now, one way or another. Usually the worst ways. Ways he couldn’t save them from. Sometimes he had even had to watch.

And now _she_ was flinging herself around like she almost wanted to be lost that way, too. The jokes were quiet. The teasing was gone. All the things he’d thought he hated but ended up enjoying. Getting used to.

And, at this point, missing. Everything from her telling him not to eat like the bottomless pit he was or not to get himself drunk, right down to berating his endless stoicism and discipline, to the point that he’d found himself being dragged out of his once-impenetrable shell, inch by inch, by a hook in his navel like she’d caught him on a fishing line.

He even missed hearing her laugh at him and rib him over getting an undead’s hammer straight to his sternum and being thrown flat on his ass, wind knocked out of his lungs. Pointing out, unnecessarily, that yes, that drake _had_ , in fact, swallowed him whole. As if he hadn’t noticed. Thanks for the reminders now and then.

And yet all of it made getting the shit beaten out of him not seem so bad, as long as she was fighting by his side.

He probably ought to just back off and let her get over it. But when she was flying into berserk rages and running ahead without looking back, it became hard to let it go. When she nearly died fighting hordes of undead while he struggled somewhere a few feet away, poisoned and weak. Surrounded but distracted, glancing at her every few seconds, even with only the one eye to spare. All but ignoring the assorted jagged-toothed living dead bearing down on him, one thought on his mind: _Get her back on her feet._

Now he lay here, staring up at the stars. His eyepatch itched, and he abruptly ripped it off his head and flung it over with his other gear. That wasn’t something he ever did, as self-conscious as he was of the gaping hole in his skull. But, right now, every damn thing annoyed him. Relief from any of it was better than none.

That, and maybe it felt nice to throw something. He wanted to _destroy_ something, with his hands rather than shooting an arrow. But if Sadja _was_ asleep, he wasn’t going to wake her.

All of it kept replaying in his head. Things she’d said. Things she _hadn’t_ said. The silence that had lingered when there previously would have been none, because she would’ve broken it. He kept trying to figure it out. Driving himself crazy. It felt wrong. This should be the last thing on his mind, but it kept clawing its way back to the surface.

Perhaps the most absurd, uncharacteristic part of it all was the simple question that kept knocking against the walls of his skull: _Is it me?_

Something he was doing? Something he wasn’t doing? Was he giving himself too much credit, making himself too important? Was he completely blowing this all out of proportion? Was he just being a big damn idiot?

And where the _hell_ had his discipline gone?

It used to define him, and now he felt like he’d managed to shunt it all into her and straight _out_ of himself. Gone, at least where she was concerned. But what she had right now wasn’t really discipline, or she wouldn’t be charging headlong into battle… Not that he hadn’t done that his fair share of times.

He actually felt like doing it right now. Walking right down off the particular little formations of ruins that had allowed them to climb up here and finding something to punch. In the face. Hard.

Not helping curb that wrathful desire was the fact that that he still hated himself for not catching up to her in time to haul her up to their perch in his arms, or just over a wide shoulder if she kept fussing, after she’d hurt her leg. No, she’d walked on it instead. Climbed on it.

Something else shoved its way into the front of his mind. Another thing she’d said just a few hours ago, before sundown. _“I’m not here to distract you.”_

Caiden snorted. His gaze flicked down from the sky to watch another ooze try to make his way up the ruins toward them. Giving it no thought, he found his bow and another arrow, also knocking this one away from their excuse for a camp. Away from Sadja. Away from what he wanted to protect more than anything else. More than saving the world.

Not here to distract him…

It was a little late for that now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is over at Taff's!
> 
> ###  [What you having?](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019/chapters/29913372)
> 
> Following the death of the first Elder Dragon, Caiden goes off on his own to celebrate - by drinking. Alone. At least, until Sadja finds him.


	3. Still Offended

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a tumble off a high cliff and a date with the ground leaves Sadja arguably injured, Caiden insists on getting her checked out to make sure she's alright. Sadja agrees - if, you know, he's the one checking... and she finds out more about him than she expected.

It wasn’t the best spot in the world, by any means. Rocks, moss, tangles of grass and a few brambles growing this way and that. But at least the stone was fairly smooth. That, and it was above the encampment, so they had privacy. And a view, but Caiden didn’t pay too much attention to the view. That was Sadja’s job.

Caiden’s job was to pay attention to _her_ , at least right now.

“Sit,” he ordered, gesturing to the rocks, as he pulled his gauntlets off and dropped them in what would soon be his personal gear pile.

Instead of the mock soldier act he’d gotten before, Sadja lolled her tongue out and panted as she sat, holding her hands in front of her but tucked down like puppy paws.

Caiden shot her a look and managed to keep the tiny curl of a smile away from his lip.

Sadja frowned and sat properly. He could all but read _you’re really no fun, you know that?_ on her face.

He could hear about a thousand different remarks in response to what came next, so he went ahead and got it over with.

“Take off your armor.”

Sadja’s eyebrows went up. “How much?” she asked almost innocently.

Caiden knelt beside her, looking serious as ever. “All of it.”

She stared at him. Even _she_ wasn’t sure what to make of that, apparently. He couldn’t help but savor that for half a second. He’d stumped her. That happened almost as often as him letting himself smile.

But he almost blushed again under just that look, so he frowned and grunted as if that would help chase it off. That, and the kiss she’d planted on his cheek earlier seemed to tingle.

So he clarified gruffly, “ _Armor_ , not _clothes_.”

That snapped her out of it. “Details,” Sadja muttered as she pulled her gloves off and then started removing her chain shirt. Caiden narrowed his eye for half a second when he saw her wince.

And, instantly, he leaned closer, gently taking her arms and helping to lift them, carefully tugging the chain shirt over her head. Before she had even set it aside, Caiden’s hands were on her sides, gently feeling for broken ribs. Sadja paused.

“Getting real personal there, Voros.”

“You’re lucky you’re so intact,” Caiden said, ignoring that remark. “At least one broken rib, probably bruised all the other ones. You’ll need bandages.”

That was when he realized just how close he’d gotten. He was supposed to be kneeling beside her, but when he looked her in the face again, they almost touched noses. Caiden swallowed and shifted back slightly, just enough to not feel her breath on his face.

“I’ve never been much for bandages,” replied Sadja, with a shrug that made her wince again.

Caiden snorted. “Not surprised.” Even if he had to wonder how true that was.

“You’ll do it for me then, no?”

Now he _really_ wondered how true that was.

He looked at her for a moment before he said simply, “Yeah.” After a second, he added, “You need rest, too.”

She frowned. “ _That_ I’m _really_ not into.”

“And fewer ledges.”

She clearly didn’t appreciate that, as she emphasized again, “I didn’t slip, Voros. He knocked me off.”

The defensive note in her voice made Caiden give her another quick look. “You still hit the ground.”

She muttered something he didn’t bother trying to decipher. “Are you done already?” she prompted, watching him glance her over again. “I get knocked down ten stories and all you’re worried about’s my ribs.”

“Never said that.” He nodded down at her leggings. “Take them off.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Sadja quipped as she pulled off the rest of her armor. Caiden didn’t waste any time taking her nearest arm once she was done, giving it a look-over and carefully testing her bones and joints.

“You shouldn’t have gone straight into combat,” he said flatly as he checked her other arm for any signs of fractures, carefully examining every tiny wound on her skin to search for signs of abnormal swelling.

“We were surrounded. I couldn’t just watch.” She winced when he touched another wound. “Ow – you’re so pokey.”

“Sorry.”

He then continued to her shoulders, moving around behind her to check her shoulder blades.

Sadja threw him a look. “Want to give me a massage with those big hands, while you’re back there? I’ve got a crick in my neck, too.”

Though he didn’t answer that comment, he moved one hand up to the back of her neck and caressed it gently.

All he had to say was, “Don’t think it’s a fracture.”

Maybe he kept paying attention to her neck for too long, since Caiden caught himself gently kneading at her neck – not to mention he caught her leaning back into it with a short sigh. He couldn’t quite tell if she did that just for theatrics or if she actually meant it.

“This couldn’t be your first time doing that, Voros,” she remarked.

Caiden grunted, but he didn’t answer. He resumed what he was supposed to be doing, going down to her hips instead. Because that didn’t make things worse at all.

“Definitely not your first time.”

Caiden’s eye twitched.

Checking her legs was arguably simpler, since there were no glaringly obvious wounds there, and he didn’t feel anything wrong, either. Somehow. He also avoided looking her in the face the entire time, even when she moved.

So, before long, he dragged his pack over and started drawing out some bandages while Sadja watching him curiously.

She pursed her lips briefly in thought and then said, “ _You_ fell not too long ago.”

Caiden gave her a wry glance and caught a glimpse of the smirk on her face. “You asking me to take off my armor?”

“It’s only fair. We’ll be sleeping in a minute, anyway. Then maybe I can feel _you_ up.”

There were a few things he could’ve said to that. But instead of saying anything, Caiden stopped just long enough to tug his own chain shirt off and lay it with his gloves. The shirt underneath, however, stayed on.

Sadja snorted.

Caiden came back to her with the bandages in hand and knelt beside her again. Silently, he lifted up her shirt just enough to reach her ribs and start wrapping the bandages tight around her torso.

So Sadja helpfully took her entire shirt off. Caiden froze in place, staring at the bandages in his hand.

“What?” Sadja said. “We slept together naked or almost-naked already, Voros. I _still_ don’t know if you even wore pants.”

Caiden cleared his throat and resumed bandaging.

“Not saying is making me think you didn’t.”

He grunted.

“You _really_ didn’t!”

“I _did_ ,” Caiden almost snapped, finally looking her in the face again, feeling his own grow a tad warm. “I wore pants. Alright?”

She grinned. “I never doubted you. Of course _you_ wore pants.”

Caiden made one of those noises in his throat that seemed to happen without him entirely willing them to as he finished the bandaging and sat back to survey his work. Sadja sat up straight enough to make sure he was having to survey something else, too, because they were right under his nose.

And he asked, “How’s your head?”

“Let me check.” She rubbed her skull and reported, “Still offended.”

He didn’t really give himself any time to consider what he did next. He simply did it.

Caiden leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss on the temple. Sadja stared blankly into space for a moment in what could’ve been serious shock. He felt another little moment of triumph.

“Better?” he asked as he moved away from her again, getting to his feet to finish taking off his armor.

It took her a second longer to answer only, “Mh…”

He heard her removing what was left of her own gear to drop it in a pile, but he was already unfurling his bedroll. After their experience sleeping on cold metal at one particularly odd encampment, he had decided to pack one.

Lastly, Caiden pulled his shirt off, strategically balled it up as an additional pillow, and lay down, letting his eye fall shut.

And then Sadja was there. She flopped down right beside him, almost on top of him, and lay her head on his arm. Her hair tickled. What of it wasn’t shaved, anyway. Not that he was ticklish.

He also felt some dried blood against his skin when she moved around to get comfortable. Caiden paused, lifting his head enough to look at her and survey the wound now that he could get a proper look at it.

She was clearly ignoring it, and didn’t even bother returning the look to inform him, “It’s cold.”

Caiden snorted, though he still eyed the wound. “Not _that_ cold.”

“Cold enough,” she said firmly.

He wasn’t exactly going to argue. She hated the cold, which he’d learned very well by now. That, and… well…

But, for some reason, he still felt like he had to say, “Didn’t pack your own bedroll?”

“Why should I bother?”

A chuckle escaped him at that one. Just one short, half-grunt, quarter-snort of a laugh, but it was more than unusual enough to get Sadja to smirk at him.

“I don’t hear you protesting.” She lowered her voice to a mocking gruffness, “‘Shove off, Sadja, sleep on the rocks. It’s your own damn fault you didn’t pack one.’”

Caiden grunted.

“You _never_ protest. Sometimes I wonder if you were ever trying.”

“It’s got nothing to do with trying,” Caiden replied quietly as he reached a hand over to gently touch the wound on her head. Sadja winced and waved his hand off.

“I’m fine.”

“You should let me bandage that.”

“I don’t want bandages around my head.”

He gave a small growl that got stuck somewhere between his throat and his chest, but he lay his head back down… and then put his arms around her, pulling her up on top of him to lay her head on his chest. Only for Sadja to lift her head again and give him a look.

“Usually the guy goes on top.”

“Knew that was coming,” Caiden muttered.

“First you’re turning into slime and tugging on my hand, next you’re putting me on top. What are you into, Voros?”

“You aren’t laying your head on rocks. I didn’t pack pillows.”

She prodded at his abs, then ran her hand along his body to try fluffing up his pectorals. “ _You_ aren’t exactly a pillow.”

Caiden cleared his throat and managed not to squirm, grabbing the blanket and stubbornly tugging it up over the two of them as he felt her tracing a finger along his left shoulder, just below his collarbone. “Go to sleep, Sadja,” he ordered, getting the distinct feeling he’d said that before.

Of course, she didn’t listen.

“You covered up my view,” she complained, tossing the blanket back enough to let the light of the setting sun touch his skin again. “Where’d you get that?”

Caiden paused, lifting his head again and craning his neck around to glance at what she meant. Her finger brushed down a long scar again, and she arched a brow at him inquiringly.

“An arrow,” he answered, simply as that, and laid his head back down.

“Ow.”

He grunted something in agreement.

But Sadja didn’t join him in laying down. In fact, he felt her sit up higher on top of him, looking down with great interest. Caiden opened his eye to watch her.

“You really doing this?” he asked.

It was a stupid question. She just gave a vague little hum in response as her fingers danced over his skin enough to make the hairs on his neck stand on end. She touched the myriad scars she found there, pausing with curiosity at each one as if tracing them would tell her how they got there.

Which, for some reason, she seemed absurdly interested in… to the point that he felt stupidly bad to be keeping his mouth shut every time she touched one.

“Harpoon,” he, finally, halfway muttered as he felt her touch an ugly reddish mark between his ribs.

“ _Harpoon?_ ” she echoed like the very idea caused quite a bit of pain.

“From a krait.”

“Did you forget your shield that day?”

Clearly not expecting an answer, and right to do so, her hands went lower, down to his abdomen. She touched the assorted ruts and crannies there of old scars crisscrossing some of his muscles there… although, in actuality, the old wounds fit together – the image of a monster’s maw full of giant teeth, left behind on his stomach.

“Werewolf,” he said, his voice even lower this time. A hint of something like pain found its way into that one word. He hadn’t meant it to.

Sadja must’ve heard it, the way she paused. He knew she saw plenty more scars, but she’d stopped touching them. Instead, she lowered herself down to his torso again, pulling the blanket up. And she rested her arms across his expansive chest and put her chin atop them, looking him in the face as he again lifted his head enough to return her stare.

“What?” he asked quietly, his mind torn in half over whether he desperately wanted her to go to sleep or if he desperately wanted her to stay awake.

Sadja gave his eyepatch a look, and the fingers on one hand absently stroked his skin like she wanted to reach up and pull it off. Caiden swallowed.

And she asked the unspoken question already hanging in the air. “How’d you lose your eye?”

He glanced away from her, a frown finding its way to his face. “It’s a long story.”

She shrugged. “I’m curious. Or do you not want to tell?”

So Caiden shifted around to better prop his head against his sorry excuse for a pillow. He could still feel the rocks underneath it and figured he would probably wake up with a headache in the morning.

“Maybe,” he said at length.

Sadja waited. Caiden glanced at her again and shifted underneath her before he continued.

“I made enemies with a mage, years ago. He had a dagger. We fought, and when he got the chance, he stabbed me with it. I still don’t know exactly what he did.”

She grimaced slightly when he mentioned actually being _stabbed_ in the eye, but then tilted her head at him. “It sounds like he stuck you in the face. What’s not to understand?”

For a moment, Caiden just looked at her. Laying there watching him. Rising and falling on his chest, chin on her arms like she was as comfy as she could be, blanket draped over her back and around her shoulders. Listening.

And exactly why he felt a swell of a few dozen absurd emotions, he wasn’t sure he would ever fully understand.

Caiden hated to take his eyepatch off. Ever. He avoided it whenever possible, and he certainly avoided it around anyone else, especially people he cared about. Or, more specifically, people he wanted to think good of him. People he didn’t want picturing him with the hideous hole in his head. Which he had long ago realized was odd, as he was rarely preoccupied with appearances, since he usually worried more about something more important, such as efficiency.

Yet he also felt like it would be somehow cheating her not to let her see just how fucked up his face was under that piece of leather. Or to not tell her the truth – keep trying to hide it. But maybe ‘the truth’ was the wrong way to put it… He just needed to tell her all the details.

So he breathed a short sigh before he slid one hand from around her and reached up to pull the patch off, dropping it beside his head.

Sadja visibly winced. It was hard not to, considering Caiden had a perfect cavity in his head where his eye should’ve been, the skin immediately surrounding the empty socket scarred and colored a strange, unnatural hue, almost a dark grey.

But perhaps most disturbing of all was the rune, glowing a faint and evil red, that stared at her straight from the back of his the socket.

“The dagger was obsidian. It was cursed, etched with a rune. I couldn’t pull it out – neither could anyone else.” He glanced away from her, swallowing. It sounded even more absurd, and even worse, actually saying it aloud.

That, and he was talking entirely too much right now. She was supposed to do the talking. He liked it better that way.

And yet he went on, “It… disappeared. Inside me. Pure dark magic, or so I was told.” He let his head fall back on the would-be pillow instead of making such effort to stay propped up to look at her – and be looked at. “It left a rune in there. I don’t know anything else. Not what the curse is – or what it might do.”

That was it. He didn’t have any words left. His gaze drifted, stared up toward the sky as his head rested back on his shoddy excuse for a pillow. The air felt a little colder on his face than it had before as he kept drifting farther away, staring endlessly up into the darkening abyss overhead – too dark tonight even for stars to twinkle through the murky clouds.

Silently, Sadja inched up his chest, laying her head against his. She tucked her face into the crook of his neck, her warm breath sending a shiver up his spine and tingles through his skin.

He did something odd then. Quietly, he admitted, without even him knowing entirely what he meant by it, “I’m tired.”

Sadja snuggled closer against him, if that was even possible at this point. “Then go to sleep,” she suggested, helpful as ever. But there was something in her tone. Sympathy, maybe?

And, if nothing else, there was sympathy in the simple fact that she didn’t pressure him to keep thinking about it… and that she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if she knew that would distract him, and that was why she did it.

More than anything, though, he was simply distracted. Just like she wanted, presumably.

“Mm… Scratchy. You need to shave,” she teased in a mumble, her face going back to the warm shelter of his neck, her nose cold against his skin.

In spite of everything, Caiden chuckled again. This time _two_ short, deep noises somewhere in his chest, but at least it was some sign of amusement. That was, as usual, unique enough from him that he felt Sadja’s lips quirk up on one side in a smirk of satisfaction with her efforts.

Caiden put his arms around her again, hugging her against him. He drew in a deep, slow breath that raised her up into the air a surprising ways while she lay on his chest, so he could release his pent-up fears as a long sigh.

“G’night, Voros,” Sadja murmured into his skin.

No one was looking now, not even her. So, at the sound of her voice and the touch of her against him, Caiden let himself smile.

“’Night, Sadja.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I played loose with the Guild Wars lore in this one, partially because I'm not incredibly familiar with some of it (namely in relation to things like dark magic and curses, and I'm fairly positive that nothing like the werewolves I have in mind here exist in GW), and partially because I'm carrying Caiden over from my own setting, wherein he was attacked by a werewolf and gouged in the face with cursed obsidian, and both events are/were important to him as a character.
> 
> The next chapter is Taff's again.
> 
> ###  [Dragons 0, Team Voros 2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019/chapters/29919021)
> 
> After getting stranded in the jungles of the Heart of Maguuma, Caiden and Sadja realize the place was - essentially - made just for her. But slaying Mordremoth awoke other Elder Dragons... and Caiden feels he has to go back. First, he just needs to convince Sadja.


	4. Bloodstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snuggles are getting a little more frequent, the relationship running ever deeper. At least, when Caid isn't busy being hungry and doing something pretty damn stupid.

The airship offered, essentially, _nothing_ by way of privacy – or, for that matter, comfort. Moments ago, Sadja had indicated her exhaustion, so she gave a tug on Caiden’s arm to lead him toward the one remotely secluded spot she’d found, behind some crates.

Until she remembered he was wearing a collar around his neck these days, then she had to reach up and give that a tug instead, dropping a remark about needing a leash when he gave a grunt in vague protest.

“You going to use that bedroll?” she said once she stopped in her little spot and turned around. Not that it was enough privacy for her tastes – or for _his_ , either.

But she _did_ say she was exhausted again, so…

“Not yet,” Caiden replied as he threw the bedroll out, flattening it on the cold metal airship frame. He had only just pulled the blanket to go with it out of his pack when Sadja flopped down.

“You really _didn’t_ pack any pillows,” she grumbled.

He grunted something negative.

“Can I at least have your shirt?”

Caiden paused then, shooting her a look to see her laying there, propped up on one elbow, smirking mercilessly at him.

“Not like it’s cold here,” she added with a shrug of pure honesty.

He scratched his chin thoughtfully, glancing out across the landscape far below them… a landscape enshrouded in thick and unnatural red mist, flickering with the lights of magical anomalies, and dotted with floating chunks of the landscape that definitely should not be airborne.

The sunset had scarcely offered much darkness, with the rampant magic everywhere. Everything remained bathed in the same infernal red glow.

Before, it had been a jungle. The unforgiving humidity of that still hung in the air, making Caiden’s shirt cling to his back, long since stuck there from hours of running, fighting, and gliding in all his usual heavy armor.

So he returned his one eye to Sadja and replied, “It’ll be a wet, smelly pillow.”

Sadja snorted. “I’m used to your smell now, Voros. I wouldn’t ask for your shirt if I didn’t like it. And I’m already wet.”

She paused then and narrowed her eyes at herself. Even a corner of Caiden’s mouth tried to twitch up at that one.

“Unintentional, for once?” he had to ask.

That changed her tune instantly. “Ha— so you _did_ think it. I _knew_ there was filth in there somewhere.”

He grunted.

Knowing to take that as a sign that he was now out of that conversation, she finished pointedly, “I’m tired. Give me the bloody shirt.”

 _It probably has some of_ that _on it, too,_ Caiden thought dryly, but he silently pulled it over his head and handed it to her. For some reason. He wasn’t one to go handing his shirt around, much less taking it off in the first place, especially where someone could walk past this little pile of crates and find their precarious corner over this bloodstone-cursed hell. But his eye fell on the heart amulet that she still wore – that she hadn’t taken off since he put it there.

He felt so unsure before – so confused. Conflicted. Angry at himself.

That felt like so long ago now.

Sadja balled the not-as-offensive-as-presumed shirt up in a much less particular manner than Caiden always did to form it into a pillow as she remarked, “Not coming over here?”

There wasn’t much mistaking the disappointment, maybe even annoyance, in her voice. Like he was the one teasing _her._ After last night. Right.

“Be there in a minute,” he said.

She gave him a look, one brow creeping up in curiosity. Caiden couldn’t help but think about how tired she looked – a bit bleary-eyed.

So he explained flatly, “I’m hungry.”

“Are you ever not?”

He couldn’t really answer that. If he had to, though, he probably would’ve said no.

Getting to his feet, Caiden moseyed a little farther toward the edge of the ship. Their resting place was very Sadja: not only behind a pile of crates for the only privacy one could afford on a vessel like this, but also right on a hind corner of the ship, where the metal ended unceremoniously in a whole lot of nothing, some of the ends of it still twisted and starting to rust. It wasn’t half as pretty or accommodating as some of the larger asuran ships he had been on.

At least this didn’t lead onto another walkway, though. That gave them just a tad more privacy, especially since he imagined no one had planned to climb over the barricade of supplies someone had conveniently built. So, essentially, this was like sleeping in a closet: a closet floating gods-knew-how-many leagues above an accursed wasteland, with no door or railing to stop you from rolling off and plummeting straight down into the shit.

Yeah, it was all very Sadja…

Who clearly wasn’t asleep yet. Behind him, he suddenly heard, “Voros… Seriously.”

“What?”

“You’re going to sit around in a collar, shirtless.”

He kept his back turned for now, one hand fishing absently in his pack for something to eat. “Why not?”

“You can’t be that ignorant.”

Caiden threw her a look over his shoulder, one of his little smiles playing on his face. Sadja was watching him intently, and he had to wonder if it was for the off-chance that he might do what he just did. Because it made her smile, too, through some very heavy eyelids.

But then she yawned, pulled the blanket up over her head to blot out all the red glow, and he heard vague grumbling. Probably something about him. He gave a chuckle and turned his back again, pulling out one of those almond cookies she’d given him a while ago. Of course, he ate it in one bite instead of taking her advice and making it last. But the fact that he had any left at all was a testament to him trying, or at least he liked to think so.

His mind wandered – back onto the mission, which had become almost unusual for him lately, given who now snoozed peacefully a few feet away. Very uncharacteristic, and exactly what had worried him before.

Thinking of the mission, though, made him remember that the asura, Taimi, had bugged him with some kind of communication device. So… for all he knew, she’d heard every word they had just said.

_Ah… Shit._

It didn’t matter. Especially not at this point. And he didn’t care, either – or feel any shame. Besides, anyone who saw him leaping in front of Sadja to take an arrow for her while she went around wearing a heart – his heart, in more ways than one – around her neck could put two and two together, anyway.

So he reached into his pack and drew out another cookie to gulp down. But when he tried for one more, his hand found something else.

A stone. Or, really, it was more like a shard of brittle, red crystal that wanted badly to crumble to dust in his fingers. It was a tiny piece of the corrupting bloodstone that had exploded and damned this entire region, along with everyone caught in the blast. Enough of it had certainly been scattered everywhere, in the air and in the earth alike.

Caiden turned the thing over in his hands, thinking. Taimi had mentioned something about needing to test these things. She wanted to figure out how the White Mantle was harnessing their power. From what they’d found out, it was pretty simple, and it involved something Caiden did pretty often. He’d figured it would be more complicated than that and involve some kind of ritualistic magic absorption or something, instead of something so… base.

He knew this was a bad idea, but he found himself contemplating it, anyway. Better to test it now than down in the field, when the possibility of something going incredibly wrong could much more easily get both of them killed.

Then again, he should probably do this when she was at least awake.

Then _again_ , this piece was barely the size of his finger. It couldn’t possibly be that bad. Probably not even half as bad as some of the potions he’d taken. He’d stomached a lot worse – literally.

Then he could get back to Taimi, have that over with, and get some rest. That way, he also prevented Sadja from being the one to do it.

Turning the crystal over in his hand only one more time, he then tossed it into his mouth. It tingled, almost stung, down his entire jaw when he crunched it just once before swallowing.

Not much happened. It went down his throat like anything else, without suddenly exploding, burning, or nearly choking him to death. He even had the opportunity to chase it down with some water. For a moment or two, he wondered if maybe it _was_ too small a sample, after all.

Then those moments passed. No, it wasn’t too small a sample. And this was such a bad, _terrible_ fucking idea.

First, it didn’t seem but so awful, starting with a twinge in his gut – a twinge that suddenly became a twist, then an outright spasm. The pain spread from his core all the way to his fingertips, violent, shaking, catching his breath in his throat that already fought to contain something between a grunt and a yell.

His muscles caught on themselves, twisted in directions they shouldn’t, and he couldn’t stop it. It reached his neck – and went straight up into his skull, which filled with liquid fire. His clenching jaw clenched even harder, to the point where some part of him wondered if he was going to crush his own teeth out of his head.

Yet he still tried to keep any voice to this agony stuck somewhere deep in his distorting chest, which still spasmodically heaved to get him some air in spite of his broken lungs.

The fire hadn’t left. It got worse, filling his stomach, burning his insides, and blinding him—

Through all the pain, he had the strangest thought: rage. And hunger. So much _hunger_ , hurting, eating at him…

And then it stopped.

When it did, his first thought was just how damn lucky he was to still be sitting on solid metal, instead of falling to his inevitable doom – unless, of course, he managed to activate his glider in time. That would’ve been doubtful a few seconds ago. And then he would’ve ended up somewhere on the ground, alone, with Sadja still in the airship, sleeping and thinking he hadn’t lost his damned mind and done something quite on this untold level of stupid.

Caiden grunted, mostly to himself and not entirely on purpose, as he hauled himself upright from where he’d halfway sprawled out on the cold metal. He still twitched here and there, struggling to get his breath back as he tried in vain to wipe some of the sweat off his face.

Yeah – he’d be telling Taimi about that. What he might leave out, though, was that he had felt something like that once before. But only once.

At least he knew now. He would also knock any bloodstones right out of Sadja’s hand, if she ever got any ideas. But, he figured, she was smart enough to not do what he just did. Or maybe it didn’t affect everyone the same way…

Whatever the case, lucky for him, she hadn’t woken up.

So Caiden cleared his throat, guzzled all the rest of his water canteen, and then hauled himself over to the bedroll. Gently, he lifted the blanket and slid himself down right next to her.

“Woke me up, you big lout,” she mumbled, stirring a little and grumpily pushing at one of his large shoulders that had definitely found its way into her space. Not actually enough to push him away, he noted, just enough to have a mock display of irritation. “All… huge… taking up the covers…”

Sadja gave the blanket a healthy tug – despite already having plenty, because she had bundled herself up like she wanted to make a cocoon to prevent anything remotely resembling cold from reaching her.

Not that she had to worry about that now. Caiden gave a short chuckle and turned over to prevent those wide shoulders from nudging at her anymore. Sadja then saw the opportunity to get cozy with his chest, snuggling up to him without hesitation. It wasn’t like Caiden said no. She then sighed a lazy sound into his skin, falling asleep again in record time.


	5. Blindsided

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden and Sadja return to the freezing cold. Oh, and Caiden recently became a father... to a dragon.

Snow. And cold. That about summarized this place. Colder than anywhere they’d been yet, even colder than the last time they’d run into kodans and had to make camp in one of their carved-out icebergs. A bitter wind bit across his face and the nose he stopped feeling half an hour ago.

Everything only got worse when darkness fell, leaving little visible other than a few distant fires, far off in the night. Those and the frigid gales carrying ice and snow swirling this way and that, cutting over everything and leaving nothing but numbness in their wakes. A few were magical, no doubt cast by the assorted servants of Jormag, considering they’d left him very literally encased in an ice block the second they’d passed over him.

That had happened about… six or seven times? He wasn’t counting.

In fact, he wasn’t doing much anything. He sat on a snowy ridge, freezing his ass in every sense of the word. But he didn’t mind. Not really.

Caiden usually hated for someone – anyone, anything, it didn’t matter – to be on his blind side. He liked to have a full view of everything at all times, stay on full alert for any sign of danger or the smallest potential complication. He was coordinated like that. Everything had to be planned, tactical. It had to make sense.

Not so to the person standing on his blind side. And he’d gotten used to that.

For that matter, he had even gotten used to her standing on his blind side. Sadja probably did it on purpose, but she always seemed to end up there. It used to irritate him, quiet as he was in that irritation except for a knitted brow and the occasional frown to go with the frequent vigilant but awkward glances that involved far too much turning of his head. But that had stopped a while ago.

Sadja standing on his blind side had become commonplace, so he was used to that. He was even getting used to just how completely he trusted her, and _maybe_ even getting used to everything he felt whenever he looked at her or heard her voice – even if she was busy suggesting something completely ridiculous. And he, being in love, would follow anyway.

He’d recently jumped into a volcano just because she said it would be fun. But that wasn’t on his mind right now.

What _was_ on his mind was the little thing playing on his good side, where he could see it and keep it in plain view. Not an _it_ , but a _her_. Whether she was an even more unexpected _her_ that had barged into his life than the one standing on his blind side, he couldn’t really say. She was, at least, arguably stranger… but only because she was a dragon.

It turned out being chosen by an unhatched dragon egg led to having some kind of magic link with said dragon, probably something to do with souls. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t really need to. He knew what happened, and that was all that mattered. The baby dragon, Aurene, had apparently chosen him somehow. In Sadja’s words, he was a dragon papa.

It was weird. It was pretty awkward. But it touched him to the core, and it was _damn_ adorable. Even Caiden Voros couldn’t deny that… even if he knew he would’ve grunted, stayed stony-faced, and been noncommittal on confirming his status as a foster father instead of simply a guardian if anyone other than Sadja was talking about it.

But Aurene was happy with it. She was busy trilling and running circles in the snow like a being of pure, boundless energy, the crystalline nubs lining her back glinting occasionally when they caught the sparse starlight.

Caiden watched Aurene quietly, trying to will himself to stop shivering. He put up a valiant fight, but even _his_ will wasn’t that strong.

“Your nose is blue,” Sadja pointed out helpfully. He heard the snow crunch on his blind side, but he didn’t turn his head enough to let Aurene leave his sight.

He grunted.

“It’d be funny if I wasn’t worried it’s about to fall off,” she added as a sudden finger appeared and poked his numb nose. All it did was give him the vaguest indication that something had touched his face, along with a few odd tingles.

“I’m fine,” Caiden replied as he kept shivering.

He finally pried his eye away from Aurene just long enough to regard Sadja, who looked at him with almost a bored expression. Yeah, maybe he said that a little too often. He’d probably said it last time he was on fire, too – literally in the process of burning. He couldn’t really remember.

But everything else took priority. Her, the mission, now Aurene. He’d live. He _was_ fine.

Still, after a moment, he said, “We should probably hunker down for the night.”

“’Hunker down,’” she said thoughtfully, “out in the cold, in the middle of nowhere, while you’re freezing because you were too thickheaded to buy an awesome scarf.” Pointedly, she tossed one end of her own enormous scarf back over her shoulder. She looked so cute in it that Caiden almost smiled right then and there.

“ _I’m_ not tired,” she continued, “are _you_ tired?”

He shrugged. _No._

Then she finished, flat and honest, “You’re as subtle as an ox, Voros.”

He frowned, just a tad.

Sadja snorted. “Are you wearing pants _this_ time?” she asked smugly. But something in her tone indicated she genuinely wondered if he still planned on doing that, and suspected he might, because… Well, because he was Caiden.

He felt a deep warmth creeping up into his neck. She’d done this to him before, a few times now, to the point where it was almost a familiar feeling around her. Dammit, before he met her, he _never_ blushed. This was unnatural.

So he said, very much ignoring the question, “We need to get to that kodan settlement first or we _will_ freeze to death.”

“ _Aurene_ will probably be fine,” Sadja said sweetly as she scooped up the baby dragon and touched noses with her. She grinned and moved Aurene away from her face just enough to scratch her under the chin, which set the hatchling chirping in appreciation.

Something deep inside Caiden rapidly melted. Whatever it was, it coated his heart in warmth that even the blizzard couldn’t touch.

Unfortunately, though, even that didn’t stop him from shivering. Which annoyed him, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Probably. But then no one will look after her,” Caiden replied as he got to his feet, halfway speaking through his teeth in an attempt to keep them from chattering. He set off down the snowy hillside, kicking up powdery white clouds and carving a path as he went. “C’mon.”

“ _Now_ he’s in a hurry, when he was happily parked on his muscular ass earlier,” he heard Sadja telling Aurene quietly. Relatively quietly. “Do you think he’s jealous we’re cuddling and he’s left out in the snow?”

Aurene chirped. Some little part of Caiden’s mind told him it sounded like a positive chirp. A chirp of agreement.

“I think so, too.”

It didn’t look like a long walk to the kodan settlement. A pretty short one, all things considered.

But given how often he felt the need to glance over his shoulder and make sure that now-so-familiar silhouette still strolled along behind him, all while trying to keep his one-eye-to-spare out for signs of danger as well, it felt a lot longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And back over to Taff's! To find out what happened once they got to that kodan settlement...
> 
> ###  [Right.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019/chapters/29974791)
> 
> Let's just say... things get very steamy inside, despite the cold out.


	6. Shot Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Sadja left unconscious after centaurs shoot her from the sky, Caiden is left alone to carry her back to camp - and keep his only eye on her until she wakes up, no matter what a baby dragon or a baby griffon thinks about it.

It’d happened very quickly. One minute, they’d been on a hill that was almost more like a small mountain, being chased by whole herds of centaur – then they’d jumped to escape…

And then she wasn’t there anymore. He remembered the feel of the cool air biting his face from the speed he was gliding, listening to the hum of the remarkably reliable asuran technology keeping him in the air. He’d done what he always did: check to make sure she was still there.

Every time, especially in the air, she was. Usually, if someone fell or screwed up, it was him. Like the time he’d fallen flat on his face and given Sadja a good snicker. Or the second time he’d done that – or the third… 

Only that time she _wasn’t_ there. He’d had half a second to curse only having one eye to search with as he scanned everywhere before he spotted her: straight down from the hillside. She’d plummeted and fallen. Something knocked her out of the air or her glider had given out. He hadn’t seen which.

After a straight descent and fending off several more centaurs – during which he very nearly got the shit beaten out of him and ended up on the ground with her, in a way that _wasn’t_ desirable – he finally had a chance to reach her.

Now he was here, by her side, checking for a pulse…

She had one.

Caiden almost went limp with relief. He almost went so limp he couldn’t remember if he’d drank one of those potions that turned him into a slime earlier and it was only just now taking effect.

But there was no time for relief. They were still in the middle of a centaur camp, and Sadja was unconscious. He had to get her to safety.

One quick check for any broken bones that he didn’t want to disturb, and then he carefully scooped her up in his arms and started off. He couldn’t use his sword and shield like this. Theoretically, he could sling her over a shoulder and at least use the sword, but he didn’t want to do that.

He was carrying her properly, not like a prisoner or a sack of potatoes.

It took a while… or perhaps longer than a while. He had more than a few cuts, bruises, a few centaur bullets lodged in his armor, and a few of those bullets lodged in _him_ – he was tired of walking.

Sure, he had a raptor. But he didn’t really want to use that, either. Raptors were jumpy, energetic, and tended to shake you halfway off their back in a moment’s notice just because they felt like it. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable ride, either.

Sadja didn’t need that right now. Neither did he.

So he walked. Trudged, by the time he got nearer to the camp. One foot in front of the other, steadily slower, increasingly painful. Boots caked in more mud with each step, rain dripping off his face, his short-cropped hair drenched and stuck flat to his head. Not that any of it mattered.

Finally, he arrived. Just one empty tent, off in a corner of the Seraph camp… didn’t even have bedrolls in it.

Caiden grunted in annoyance. Carefully, he shifted his hold around her, until he had her held against his body supported by only one strong arm. Luckily for him, she was the right size that he could do that – and _he_ was the right size, too.

With his other hand, he twisted his arm around to slowly yank his bedroll out of his pack and toss it on the ground, kneeling to unfurl it before he, at last, gently lay Sadja down. Something in his arm popped now that he finally moved it again after carrying her non-stop for hours, and he exhaled one short hiss with a slight grimace, stopping just long enough to roll his shoulder.

Then he promptly removed her pack, set it aside, and grabbed his blanket to pull it up over her. Checked her pulse again, just to be absolutely sure. Checked her legs, checked her arms, checked her ribs – overall, she was fine. Or she would _be_ fine, whenever she woke up.

And even if she wasn’t, she’d dismiss his concerns and keep going, anyway.

Something moved in her pack that he’d put in the corner of the moist little tent. Caiden tensed, but only for half a second. As focused as he had been on Sadja, he’d almost forgotten about the little present he’d gotten her a little ways back.

It was _little_ in every sense of the word, being a baby griffon. The cat-sized thing crawled out of her pack, eyes big, blue, and blinking up at him. It looked at Sadja, blinked some more, and then padded over to give her a nudge.

Caiden stooped to scoop it up in his arms – just as Aurene, apparently sensing that he was giving affection to a small thing and it was _not_ her, stuck her head out of his own pack. Her head was still graced by a pair of makeshift antlers tied there by Sadja a few nights ago, to keep the baby dragon festive for Wintersday, along with a wreath around her neck and plenty of bright, blinking holiday lights on all the pointed scales of her back.

The griffon squeaked in Caiden’s arms and squirmed, tiny claws scraping his arm in desperation to go play with its owner. But Caiden scratched it on the head, making it calm right down as its wings happily went limp. That soul bond he had with Aurene seemed to flare, though, as the baby dragon almost frowned at him in jealousy.

“Give her a few minutes,” Caiden murmured to the tiny griffon. “She can’t play right now.”

Talking to it was the last straw, and Aurene came out of his pack, crawling straight up his arm and onto his shoulder with some unforgiving claws, all quite a bit sharper than the baby griffon’s even more underdeveloped nubs. Or possibly dragons just _hatched_ with sharp claws.

Aurene stuck her tongue right in Caiden’s ear, making him flinch, grunt, and shoot her a glare. The little shit sat on his _left_ shoulder, on his blind side, so he had to both crane his neck back and twist his head as far as it would go to even see her. The dragon looked almost smug about it.

“You two are a real handful…” Caiden snorted, about to give Aurene an annoyed little flick on the nose – but he ended up petting her instead. Sadja gave him enough trouble without grumpy baby animals and dragons around.

He set the griffon down and plucked Aurene off his shoulder, putting her beside it.

“Go on, get outta here,” he prompted with a shoo. “Go play.”

Aurene, at least, understood him, as she chirped and, in a matter of seconds, the two were taking turns chasing each other everywhere.

Caiden, however, didn’t budge. He sat right there, eye on Sadja. Every few seconds, he checked her pulse, just to remind himself she’d be fine. Slowly lifting her head, he removed that silly animal hat she wore. Silly and adorable.

Drawing an arrow, he wedged the head of it between the boards of a nearby crate and then hung the hat on it to dry. Sadja never did enjoy all the rain they had to endure.

He looked at her again. It was odd how peaceful one could look when they’d just been knocked unconscious by a blow to the skull. With a gentle brush of his fingers, Caiden pushed a stray strand of hair away from her eyes.

Rain pattered quietly on the rather insufficient tent fabric, only just decent enough to keep the water out. Sadja still didn’t stir – not yet. Not that it mattered. She’d get up soon enough.

Until then, Caiden wouldn’t move. He’d stay right there, waiting, watching… patient. If it took it, he’d wait an eternity.

But it wouldn’t. She’d wake up, be restless, be bored, and immediately want to set off again. And when she did, Caiden would be right beside her.

He couldn’t see that changing. The more he thought, the more he realized he didn’t _want_ it to change. The more he thought, the more he realized he couldn’t imagine things being different… going back to the way they were before she kicked down the door to his life and made herself at home in his heart – in a way, without even meaning to.

Attention never leaving her, Caiden reached over to touch that golden heart amulet still hanging steadfast around her neck. She hadn’t lost it, just like she said.

No, it wouldn’t change. Not if he could help it.


	7. Broken Vigilance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden finally starts giving in to all the weight crushing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: MAJOR spoilers for Guild Wars 2's story, most notably Path of Fire.

That was it. Exhausted, injured, and denying all of it, at least to _him_ , Sadja slid off her mount and straight to the ground.

Before she even had time to touch the stones they’d been standing on, Caiden was there, skinning his currently-uncovered knees to catch her in his arms. He cursed, glancing her over. On the back of his own mount – springers… giant rabbits, to be exact, as ridiculous as that sounded – Aurene sat and watched him in a particularly grumpy, judgmental manner.

“Aurene,” he rumbled. His voice wasn’t the best right now. He needed water and food, and he hadn’t had a moment’s rest since being nearly killed by a god. “C’mon. We’re making camp.”

The baby dragon trilled in an annoyed, haughty way, and looked away from him. She spread her wings like she was getting ready to just fly off.

“ _Aurene_ ,” he snapped, “get _over_ here.”

She wasn’t listening. He kept feeling her emotions – an endless stream of them that he couldn’t block out… he had for quite a while now, but never like this. Never when she was upset. Anger, confusion, sadness – it all crashed into him like waves. Feelings that weren’t his own, but he couldn’t ignore them or push them aside. They almost _felt_ like his own. They were so strong now it was getting harder to tell the difference.

And he could tell some of it was blame. Blame cast on him. Because, after all, wasn’t he supposed to _protect_ Aurene – and, thus, also her brother, Vlast? Wasn’t that his job, as her chosen, as essentially their foster father? And Vlast had sacrificed himself to save Caiden’s life…

That wasn’t exactly protecting.

Caiden tried to push it aside – all of it. Now Aurene was trying to fly away. One of the only dragons still left in the whole world, something that Balthazar would undoubtedly seek, not to mention kind of his daughter. Adoptive dragon daughter, but daughter nonetheless. She couldn’t go off alone, now more than ever.

So when her little wings failed her and she ended up circling slowly to the ground, which would’ve been adorable on literally any other occasion, Caiden had to scoop her up.

That was hard to accomplish, considering he had to carry Sadja as well, and he still refused to throw her over his shoulder like logic dictated he should. He had to balance her against his body and on one tired, shaking arm, so he could use his free hand to grab Aurene and pull her up against his chest as well, since there was room enough against it for them both.

“I know you’re upset,” he said as the baby dragon hissed and squirmed, “but we’re staying together. That’s final.”

With that, he trudged down the rocks and into the oasis, carrying the two of them. Sadja unconscious in one arm, Aurene very conscious and very frustrated in the other. Caiden didn’t go far, finding the first satisfactory patch of palm trees where he figured he could put up a hammock. He hadn’t forgotten about the hammock. Sadja was going to wake up in one, one way or another. Because it was what she’d wanted.

Aurene was angry – and getting angrier. He could feel it. She growled at him, a low and unfamiliar sound that made her whole tiny body rumble. Caiden froze in an instant, stopping to almost glare down at her, half in alarm and half very upset.

Why would she _growl_ at him?

Because she was blaming him, of course. She had nothing else to blame. She could blame Balthazar, but she didn’t really understand. She was just a kid… No, younger than a kid. She was a baby. And she didn’t understand all that had happened or all that she felt, so she lashed out. It just so happened he made the perfect target.

Or maybe it was because all of this – _all_ this shit, every single bit of it – was his fault.

He had no time to dwell on that before she bit him.

She twisted her stumpy neck around to clamp her jaws right down on his bicep, which also made a perfect target, being sizable, within reach, and unarmored. She bit hard – more than hard enough to draw blood.

He let out a short yell, from surprise more than anything else, even if it did hurt. She already had quite a few teeth, and they weren’t at all dull – nor was her mouth terribly small for a dragon her size.

That loosened his grip on her just enough for her to wriggle free of his arm, and she immediately clawed her way straight up one of the shorter palm trees nearby, hiding at the top and coiling her tail around the trunk to glare at him with her big, shining eyes. She looked ridiculous still dressed in her Wintersday decorations, compliments of Sadja. The multicolored lights lining her back continued to blink.

But that removed none of the weight of her emotions, all of which he still felt acutely. That, and he felt the hot blood running down his arm.

Caiden growled in his throat, but he made himself stop. His hold on Sadja weakened, and he focused on gently lowering her to the ground. Hammock… He had to get that hammock. Being practical and using his bedroll was all but out of the question to him now. He had to do something right, because for the past few days, he’d done a wonderful job of fucking up absolutely everything else.

He threw Aurene another look, but the dragon didn’t even look at him in return. She stared off across the desert, still a seething little bundle of emotions she didn’t understand. Caiden pressed one hand against the bite on his arm, watching her briefly.

She didn’t understand. That was all. He didn’t hold it against her… He didn’t much understand right now, either.

Caiden sighed. At least she wasn’t trying to run off anymore.

Turning, he trudged toward some of the other tents in the oasis. Locals. Maybe they’d have something he could use. He’d talked to one almost in a daze. He remembered the man in slight awe of being in the Commander’s presence. When Caiden had indicated he wanted something, he was ready to give it to him. Turned out he had a hammock – a green one. Caiden paid him for it despite him saying he would love to help the Commander out for free.

Being this damn “Commander” had only won him so much. Some people looked up to him. More got killed for his sake, and he had no doubt that number would do nothing but increase. Their deaths were on him. Some weren’t – Sadja was right about that. He’d done some good. But was it really enough? Was it worth this?

Being the Commander had only ever gotten him one good thing… He’d found her. That alone made it worthwhile.

And yet it was hard to keep himself convinced of that for long, as he headed back toward his little palm tree grove. Because the one thing that made all of this worth it was laying on the ground, unconscious and wounded – and his foster daughter was so upset that it was impossible to ignore, thanks to their bond. And now thanks to the wound in his arm.

Silently, Caiden fixed the hammock, before turning his attention to Sadja instead. She still hadn’t moved, except for her breathing.

That was another problem. The pressure on him became pressure on her – pressure to hide the truth. She kept her wounds from him, her exhaustion, all of it, just for his sake. Hell, she could’ve gotten herself killed, just trying not to add to his burdens, to the weight now starting to crush even his strong shoulders.

Gods, he was hungry. He was tired, and hurting from head to foot. And Aurene’s emotions wouldn’t _stop_ …

Wounds. He had to check her wounds first. Caiden could at least focus on that. Digging around in his pack, he pulled out a few supplies – bandages, ointments, some splints…

He went over his usual routine, but even with no obviously broken bones, there could’ve just as easily been something else going on. Internal injuries, among other things. He probably had them, too, all things considered. He’d practically been under Balthazar’s feet before the god decided to knock him a mile and try to kill him… and then Vlast…

Caiden swallowed. He wasn’t worried about his wounds. They didn’t matter. Not right now.

But he _was_ hungry and that _did_ matter. With Sadja’s wounds tended to, her armor in a neat little pile nearby, and that questionable leg she’d been nursing all day done up in a decent enough cast, he carefully took her up in his arms again. Stepping up to the hammock, he lowered her into it, despite an odd wound in his lower back catching and making him exhale a sharp grunt.

For a moment, he stood there quietly, watching her. She was still out. She’d probably stay out for hours, which would mean she’d need some vigil.

Caiden scratched through his pack again, looking for food. Those cookies Sadja had given him were long gone, but he knew he at least had some meat and maybe some eggs from monsters they’d fought, and this point, he wasn’t sure he was above just eating it all raw…

Guilt. An odd little twinge of it, coming from Aurene. It faded fast in her whirlwind of emotions, but there was no mistaking it. So that meant the meat or eggs or whatever he’d had was long gone, because having a dragon ride in your pack meant your food store wasn’t always the way you’d left it.

Again, he sighed. Caiden rubbed his face. All that was left in his pack were a few bottles of booze, because Aurene was smart enough not to have interest in that, unlike him.

Fine. If he couldn’t have food, he’d have the damn booze.

He pulled one of the bottles out, uncorking it and immediately starting to drink. Guzzling half in a few massive swallows, he got to his feet to wander around the oasis as he drank still more, carrying his pack – with the rest of the whiskey in it – in his other hand.

Caiden had been through a lot. He’d fought monsters, he’d seen his friends die. People had sacrificed themselves for him before – for some reason. He’d fought dragons, he’d watched people become corrupted minions of darkness before his own eyes. He’d seen all those things, lived through them, and he’d endured a lot more. But nothing quite like these past few days.

A dragon had thrown himself in front of a god’s sword: a sword aimed for _him_ , for Caiden. As if the fact that a dragon had saved him wasn’t enough, it had to be _that_ dragon… Aurene’s big brother. So didn’t that make him – that dragon, Vlast – kind of his foster son, considering his relationship to Aurene?

Vlast hadn’t even _known_ him, but he’d done that. He’d done it without thinking, without question. What in the hell made Caiden so damn important? He wasn’t better than anyone else. He certainly didn’t deserve Vlast’s life. He didn’t _really_ deserve Sadja, either. Or Aurene.

He drank more of the whiskey. He didn’t really know what it was, but it was strong and it tingled, and it probably sent a gracious plenty of alcohol shooting straight through his empty, desperate stomach and right up to his head. Maybe that was why he felt a strange anger eating at the back of his skull, burning like the drink going down his throat.

Those damn memory crystals. Vlast had said he didn’t ever really want this responsibility – that he felt trapped by it. It was starting to hang on him, and something about how death was a kind of freedom.

Caiden stopped by the shimmering, bright blue water, the pretty pools of it in the middle of the desert rocks and palm tree groves. For a second, he stared at his starlit reflection. He growled in his chest.

How many lives? How many were lost for his sake, or because of some damn order he gave? Because he screwed up, or because someone so desperately wanted to lay their life down for him? Or because someone wanted to use other people’s lives just to _get_ to him? What about Sadja, ignoring her wounds for his sake, driving herself to the point of absolute exhaustion just because she didn’t want to _bother_ him? How long before she was next?

Caiden paced. He gripped the first bottle, empty, by the neck. Flipping it in his hand, he chucked it clean across the oasis, listening to the not-terribly-satisfying sound of shattering glass.

It wasn’t enough. The rage got worse. He dropped his pack by the water, pacing. His legs hurt, but he kept walking on them anyway. He couldn’t afford to rest – he could _never_ afford to rest. He might as well get used to it.

For some reason, his fist found a nearby rock then, slamming into it so hard it made his knuckles sting and sent some pain shooting up his arm. The poor, giant oasis stone ended up with some unsightly cracks, thanks to entirely too much absurd strength with powerful frustration behind it – and nothing to take it out on, no one to show it to.

Caiden rubbed his hand and resumed pacing, trying to make himself relax. He couldn’t. He was supposed to be disciplined. Last time he did this, at least it was for a good reason – it was because of her and the way she made him feel.

Aurene only made it worse. He wouldn’t have been surprised if anyone else in his place would’ve clutched their head and roared at her to stop it and to shut up, stop moping, but he didn’t. Instead, he tried to block her out. Normally, that wasn’t so hard. Right now, unable to get a grip on _himself_ , much less her, it was impossible.

All he wanted from the entire world right now was to climb into that hammock and curl up with Sadja, hold her against him, and know that at least – even through all of this – he still had her.

But he couldn’t. What if he ended up being what got her killed? Something told him he wasn’t going to make it through this. She’d said as much herself. It was becoming increasingly obvious just how hopeless it was to stop a dragonslaying, insane god. He was going to lose his life on this mission, end up sacrificing himself somehow.

Maybe Vlast was right. It wasn’t like Caiden couldn’t relate to the burden of fate, to feeling trapped. Maybe death was freedom. And what better way to die than to save the world?

There was a time, he thought, when he wouldn’t have minded that. He would’ve willingly thrown himself on that altar, offered himself up as the necessary sacrifice for the greater good. Now… he didn’t want to.

Maybe, if Sadja hadn’t come into his life, he would almost agree with that dragon. Maybe he wouldn’t mind dying for his cause. But he didn’t want to hurt her. She’d seen this coming, she’d seen it so long ago – back when they first started even having feelings for each other at all. He wanted to be there for her. He _had_ to be. He couldn’t do that to her, no matter what happened.

And he wanted to live. He wanted to spend more time with her… The rest of his life. And he didn’t want that to be whatever happened between now and confronting Balthazar.

How much had he just drank? He’d lost track. Somewhere in his thoughts, he’d gone back to his pack and gulped down more of that booze. Now he found himself standing near the hammock, ready to keep watch over Sadja all night.

Caiden went to a palm tree, one of the ones supporting Sadja’s hammock, and sank down to lean one shoulder against it. He stared out at the oasis and wondered why he felt like he was breaking.

But he _didn’t_ break. That wasn’t him. _Other_ people broke, he didn’t. Ever. No matter what happened. He had to be ever… valorous… valiant… No, there was some other word he wanted… Vigilant. And… strong.

Was he drunk? Maybe he was drunk. Maybe this was him crashing from being an angry drunk into being a sad, tired drunk. Everything was a haze, and now there was something on his face. Felt like it came from his eye. The one he still had, anyway.

Whatever it was, it was wet. And his breathing was choppy and getting worse. He swallowed, blinking a few times and feeling that wet run down one side of his face. The fuck? Was it blood? Was his losing his other eye, too, for some reason? But he hadn’t been wounded there, and it didn’t _feel_ like blood—

Wait, was he crying?

He didn’t cry, either. Ever. All of this was wrong. Bullshit. It didn’t make any sense. It was fucking _stupid_.

Caiden growled in frustration at it all – a deep, strangled, turbulent growl that wanted so badly to turn into a ragged groan that it did, just before it was over. He blinked his bleary eye again and grunted, loudly, trying to send all his emotions off to go die somewhere. They didn’t.

Aurene’s emotions stayed, too. They kept lingering, pulsing, eating their way inside him and twisting around everything that already made his heart feel like a dead weight in his chest. A dead, aching weight.

A heart filled to the bursting point was heavy enough – but his was a heart made of steel. It wasn’t made to hold all this. It had no give, even with his armor broken.

Breathing kept getting harder. His throat felt like it was closing up. He wasn’t used to this. His chest hurt. His heart hurt. His head hurt. His eye burned. His entire drained body full of wounds ached – horribly. And the bite from Aurene still stung on his bicep, leaving blood trickling down to his chain glove.

Thinking steadily became harder. He was hungry – starving. He was bleeding. He was tired… He was so tired. He couldn’t keep his eye open.

No – he had to. He _had_ to stay awake. Sadja was defenseless, asleep, exhausted, injured, all those other things. He had to be here to watch over her. He…

Caiden’s eye slowly fell shut, and he slumped against the palm tree, his chest heaving, hard and shaky, for a few more seconds before very steadily slowing down to something resembling a rhythm. Exhaustion finally came to take him.

Just before everything faded to black that was likely to become nightmares, he hoped in some vague, tiny recess of his mind that Sadja wouldn’t find tears on his face in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is another of Taff's-- be sure to read it before continuing here! You need to be familiar with these feels to understand the next chapter.
> 
> ###  [Oasis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019/chapters/30564801)
> 
> After Caiden has effectively beaten himself up in more ways than one, Sadja receives a rude awakening - and finds Caiden unconscious.


	8. Speeding Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden reflects on some things he heard - or _thinks_ he heard - while unconscious... and Sadja finally gets to use the hammock for its intended purpose. Or, at least, the one she'd intended for it. Too bad Caiden's still a little slow.

He kept dwelling on it. It was hard not to, really. Even harder now that he finally had a proper chance _to_ dwell on it, instead of remaining constantly on the move and filling his mind with the here-and-now, which usually involved trying not to get killed or slip and fall off a ledge. Still, ever since he’d woken up the afternoon following his… _episode_ , it kept coming back to him, tugging at the corners of his mind and begging him to take the time to mull it all over again, try to figure it all out.

“It” being the things he’d heard – or thought he’d heard, at least… After all, he hadn’t been conscious.

Yeah, he had passed out. Exhaustion, pain, alcohol, and a heaping of guilt didn’t work wonders for staying awake. The fact that he had passed out was bad enough, but apparently a regretful and worried Aurene had woken Sadja to take care of him. Or, at least, that was what she said.

According to Sadja, Aurene had dumped her right out of the hammock and pointed out the fact that Caiden had gone and given himself the luxury of getting drunk, beating himself up in more ways than one, and passed out wounded against a tree. Because of course she’d watched all of it, and Caiden felt a twinge of guilt for that. He wasn’t making the best would-be father in the world. Most fathers didn’t fall apart in front of their upset kids.

But something else was bothering him – something _else_ to do with that little dragon and the bond they shared. Instead of anything he normally heard or saw in his sleep, no matter how he ended up finding that sleep, he heard her. He’d heard Sadja. Seen a few vague, fleeting images, some odd feelings he felt sure he shouldn’t have.

While he hung the hammock again for the night, alone in the secluded little patch of palm trees he’d found by the river, he ran though them again in his mind. A few had faded, or were vague enough that he felt even less sure they were real. But some, and perhaps they were the most important ones, remained strong, almost as audible as hearing her say them again, standing just a few feet away…

_“I messed up too. I know I should have said something. But you’d have gotten all worked up over it. Woulda tried to make me stay put. And I can’t stay put, not right now.”_

Caiden frowned to himself, tightening the ropes supporting the hammock.

_“You’d march into the fray, and who’d be there to cover your left flank? You need your little attack dog by your side, Voros… That’s what they’ve called me sometimes, your Dragon’s Watch friends. I don’t think they like me very much. Except Canach. Maybe.”_

He tugged self-consciously at the eyepatch on his face. But he was only keeping himself from doing exactly what he did next – remembering the rest of it.

The quiet murmur of his name – _“Gods, Caid…”_ – his _first_ name, his nickname. None of this “Voros” she insisted upon when she was focused.

And what came next, the _no_ , the insistence— _“I don’t give a toss about what happens to me. Me, I’m relatively unimportant. You though? You’re important. You matter. To the world, for one. You’ve done good for it, and you’ve got so much left to give still…_

_“Except your life, you hear me?”_

Caiden swallowed. Hard.

_“Keep that.”_

He planned to. And she was keeping hers. He’d make sure of it. They were both getting out of this alive, “important” or not. Sadja, unimportant? Where the hell would he be without her? Caiden rubbed his knuckles – knuckles she’d treated while he was passed out drunk on self-pity – and felt a swell of frustration. She wasn’t unimportant. Not by any means…

Still, it didn’t feel real. It _sounded_ like her, like things she’d say. But he wasn’t sure if his mind was making it all up, playing tricks on him… It wouldn’t be the first time he’d deceived himself over one thing or another.

Aurene watched him. Caiden pulled himself out of it and looked at her. Sadja was off somewhere else, probably trying to find one more high ledge to stare out from before she called it a day.

And that was the only reason why Caiden could ask, his voice low and almost sheepish, “Was it real?”

He kept his one eye trained on Aurene. She looked back at him for a moment, her own big orb eyes all wide and staring like a curious cat, which was a step toward normal and a considerable improvement over their last camping venture.

The baby dragon gave a quiet little trill. Then she chirped, and the sound brought with it a strange ray of feelings Caiden had no trouble parsing. To him, Aurene practically said, plain as day— _Yes_.

Caiden stared at the dragon for a moment, then glanced at the ground. His eye stuck there as he lost himself in thought…

Until a hand touched his shoulder. Given the touch was on his blind side, he should’ve pivoted to face the perpetrator instantly. But he knew that touch, and he didn’t even tense. If anything, he did just the opposite.

At least, until he felt her hand slide away and start working on the fastenings on his back, the things keeping his armor on. Caiden paused and looked over his shoulder at her.

“I guess you’re having trouble getting this off,” Sadja pointed out, “since you still have it on.”

“I haven’t gotten that far,” Caiden replied a bit flatly.

“You’re slow.”

She tugged his armor off and casually dropped it at his feet as Caiden turned to face her, lifting a brow at her very slightly as he reached for some of the clasps on her own gear. She flicked her eyes up toward his face, one finger absently tracing the outline of his belt buckle.

A moment’s pause was all it took. About the right amount of time for Aurene to trill again, very quietly, and bounce her way over to the shadow of a palm tree, long and dark in the light of the setting sun.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, he kissed her. Suddenly. He didn’t want to give himself time to hesitate again – though why he still felt hesitant about this anymore, he couldn’t even be sure. Because when he kissed her, everything felt… _right_. Everything actually felt like it would work out. The world _wouldn’t_ be destroyed. They’d be just fine.

His belt came off next, tossed away and into the sand as Sadja steadily worked off the rest of his armor. Caiden’s hands were a bit gentler, more methodical, undoing all her clasps in a neat order even without him exactly processing it. His armor was thrown this way and that, hers ended up in a relatively organized pile. Somehow.

The beating hot sun finally gave way to the chill of a desert night – even if it still did little to cool the fire burning under Caiden’s skin. He picked her up, held her against him long enough to draw an impatient hum from the lips he wouldn’t stop kissing. Thankfully, when they reached the hammock, he didn’t manage to ruin the moment again by dumping them abruptly into the sand.

He did find other ways to ruin it, though.

It wasn’t the hammock, which stayed stable even with Caiden atop her. It wasn’t the ropes holding it up, which didn’t even creak. It happened when his hands slid up from her hips while hers ventured a bit lower, and he finally edged away from her lips, making his way down her neck to rumble out a few words that turned out to be anything but choice.

“You’re not unimportant.”

Sadja tensed. Her hand squeezed something perhaps a little too hard. Caiden grunted.

“Your other head still thinking, Voros?” she retorted with a snort, giving him a touch that pulled a growl from his throat, tightening his back as his hips push her a little deeper into the hammock… Trying to play it off, even with the edge of surprise in her voice. Caiden had to suck in a bit more air.

“A little,” Caiden answered in a low, warm breath right on her neck. She shivered underneath him, just once. _But not much_ , he added in a kind of mental grumble.

But she suddenly asked, “Who said I was unimportant?”

Her hand moved away from him only enough to stop touching – which was also enough to remind him he should’ve kept his mouth shut.

He just made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a growl, a needy thunder low in his chest. A rumble that said, _Please forget about it._

Her lips against his rough cheek twitched into a familiar smirk. “I’m betting on you in your war against your pants… Let’s get you out of them.”

Her tone had unspoken words, too. They sounded very much like, _We’re not done talking about this._

But her hands said something different. One reached up to tug on the collar he’d forgotten to take off, pulling his lips back down to hers, and the other told him that he was still being slow. Caiden let out another growl – one to tell her that wouldn’t be happening anymore.

Just a few yards away, Feathers, Sadja’s little owl griffon, found her playmate laying under a palm tree. She’d been busy in the river, and she arrived with a fish hanging from her little pokey beak. Padding over to Aurene, she dropped her catch and nuzzled it toward the baby dragon to share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Admittedly, I wanted to make this smuttier than its original version, but I'm awful enough at it already. Hopefully it wasn't too cringey.


	9. Bubbles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden and Sadja get a new addition to their growing stables: a floating stingray-thing called a skimmer. Yeah, Caiden doesn't really get it, either. But he likes his, so maybe it's finally time to name one of his steeds... and endure Sadja's inevitable teasing.

Caiden had decided that deserts were a little extreme for his tastes. The day was too hot, and the night wasn’t a pleasant kind of cool following it. It was damn cold.

Too cold to be stopping here instead of going back to their larger encampment, just a few miles off. The wind blowing off the river nearby didn’t really help. Considering they were currently dressed for the warmer climate, that made it all the chillier.

But, of course, that larger camp was a good ways off, and it was far from private. The two of them had considered the latter increasingly important lately.

Sadja was busy hitching their recently-acquired skimmers to some palm trees near the water, making sure they could reach it. Considering they were essentially giant, floating stingrays with extra fins and a few tendrils, it was hard to hitch them to much anything, but Sadja had it figured out.

Caiden was busy hanging the hammock with that ridiculous little – using the term lightly, considering the thing was longer than his leg – sand shark weaving in and out of the sand at his feet. The thing followed either one of them around like a puppy, depending on whoever smelled the most like food at the time.

Considering Caiden had just finished enough food for two people and grudgingly dropped the shark a few scraps, it was currently more infatuated with him.

He wasn’t terribly crazy about it, given his past experiences with sharks of the sea and sand varieties. But at least it hadn’t tried eating his leg yet. Still, he’d long since made the decision to keep his boots on until he was off the ground and in the hammock.

Sadja turned and tossed a bit of meat into the air, past Caiden’s head. That, of course, got his head to turn – and the shark to whip away from his feet and through the sand so fast it kicked up a wake of it that made Caiden’s scowl deepen a little.

The shark burrowed deep enough into the sand to barely pop out in time to catch the scrap in midair. Sadja laughed, and Caiden scratched some stray sand out of his short hair with a grunt.

“So we’re keeping it,” he commented.

“Obviously,” Sadja replied, making her way over to pet the shark on its scratchy nose that poked out of the sand like an odd little rock. But the long, tan-to-blue fins arcing off its back kind of gave its camouflage away.

“Thought of a name yet?”

Sadja hummed, continuing to pet its nose as she thought about it. Caiden glanced at her briefly, testing the strength of the hammock ropes, before he headed over to the skimmers. They were floating there, as docile as a pair of huge cows, their slick skin shimmering in the moonlight. They would’ve been downright creepy if they weren’t so… strangely pleasant. Which didn’t make much sense, though that didn’t make it any less true.

But they were quiet, disciplined, and strong. Caiden liked them.

So he went up to his skimmer with a treat the trainer had given him. He wasn’t really sure what it was made of, and even if he probably would have eaten it to figure that out, he wasn’t going to… this time, anyway.

The skimmer stared at him with a pair of white eyes, gliding its wide mouth a little closer to nibble the treat from his hand. Behind him, he heard Sadja going through a few names aloud and _nh_ ing in indecision over most all of them.

He reached up to pat his skimmer on its broad head. And he muttered, “I ought to name you, too.”

The skimmer watched him.

“Hm… Bubbles.”

It nudged his hand.

“You like that?”

It nudged him again. A minuscule half-smile twitched at Caiden’s lips, almost invisibly.

“Alright.”

“ _What?_ ”

Caiden paused, tentatively looking over his shoulder. Sadja stood there, barely two feet away, a grin plastered on her face. He felt a flash of warmth at his neck as a blush crept into it.

“What?” he echoed back, as gruff and stony as ever.

“Bubbles!” Sadja said with a merciless laugh. “You named him _Bubbles_. Voros, I never imagined you were so… cutesy?”

 _Cutesy?_ It just made sense. The thing left a trail of bubbles wherever it glided. It wasn’t cute, it was reasonable.

Her continued snickering made it clear she wasn’t getting over this anytime soon. Caiden let a low growl linger in his throat like that would drive off the blush, patting Bubbles on the nose to make sure he wasn’t taking this the wrong way. He considered making a statement regarding the fact that he’d never really had any pets, and this may very well be the first thing he’d ever named, but he didn’t say a word.

“You really like those floaty things, don’t you?” she just had to ask.

Caiden shrugged with a noncommittal grunt. Or maybe his grunt _was_ the shrug, since his shrug was so subtle.

“Maybe because they say about as much as you usually do?”

Instead of answering that, he asked simply, “You still need that maintenance?”

She quirked a brow at him.

He met her stare evenly, removing his hand from Bubbles’ head. “The sand,” he clarified.

Sadja smirked.

Actually, nights in the desert _weren’t_ so cold… And they really weren’t bad, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have another absolute must-read from Taff. Brace yourself for the most serious of feels yet - because nobody fights a god and doesn't die at least once. But is something like that going to get between Caid and Sadja? Even after all she told him?
> 
> ###  [Fall and fall and fall-](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019/chapters/30646191)
> 
> They stood up against a god. They paid the price. And yet, they come back... with just a few more scars.


	10. Wintersday Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following Aurene entering her teenage phase and going off on her own, Caiden and Sadja are left in the desert even on Wintersday Eve - a desert that doesn't seem to celebrate the holiday. Caiden, though, is determined to celebrate it either way, and maybe even surprise Sadja... and while it doesn't quite go as planned, no one can claim it wasn't a merry Wintersday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Taff for (and on) Christmas (2017).

As it turned out, the people of the Crystal Desert didn’t do much celebrating when it came to Wintersday. Here it was Wintersday Eve, and the desert looked the same as always. A few people had put out a few decorations, but not many. That wasn’t too surprising, though, considering cultural differences. It wasn’t exactly _winter_ , either.

But Caiden was used to celebrating it. He felt a little wrong not doing _anything_.

Despite all the chaos everywhere and the lack of a decorated baby Aurene following him around and trying to climb his legs – which was impossible now, anyway, considering Aurene was the size of a pony with wings… a _big_ pony – they had decided to take a few days off. The world had managed not to explode just yet, so what were one or two days?

They spent that time in Amnoon. Sadja made a point of trying to lose him, probably so she could sneak off to the casino. As much as Caiden knew he should go and find here there and tell her not to blow all her gold on gambling, he didn’t. Maybe she’d learn on her own.

Who was he kidding with that, though, really?

No, he didn’t _actually_ think she’d learn anything. He just had other plans. Namely, he took the time to find Wintersday decorations – and food. Lots of it. He’d already made one food trip for the day without anyone noticing, but when he showed up at his home-away-from-home with a huge, imported pine tree hefted over one shoulder, one of the house servants met him at the door.

Caiden wasn’t used to having servants. He didn’t much like it, either. He did his work himself, and that was all there was to it. Asking for help was also generally a foreign concept. But they had been assigned to him by Amnoon’s overly-grateful council, so now he and Sadja had two servants who buzzed around their little one-room house whenever they felt it acceptable. They were always so eager to help and so excited over it, it was hard to say no. After all, they just wanted to do their job.

So when one of them asked if he could help somehow, Caiden explained his plans to decorate the interior for Wintersday. The other servant showed up soon, too, and also got all excited about helping. Caiden left the tree the boxes of decorations with them to set up, heading back to the market to get a few more things. Mostly food. For right now, not later.

By the time he started heading home, it was already getting dark… it was later than he’d intended. But, as it turned out, it was hard to escape from people, stares, and even curious children when you were considered a hero – and when you had been all but forced to give some giant speech in front of the whole city a few days ago.

As he neared that little flat house, he paused in his tracks. There was no mistaking the smell of cooking coming from those open windows. That, of course, meant he didn’t stay paused very long, because it smelled _delicious_.

The instant he entered, he saw the table all set and ready with a giant, steaming turkey as the centerpiece. Caiden blinked. To his right, Sadja was still fiddling with food in their little excuse for a kitchen, licking something from her finger. She looked at him all too smugly when he entered and stood there in a slight daze.

“You thought I was gambling,” she sniped with a tug of a smirk.

And he got a sudden reminder that he still very much had that blushing, fidgeting Caiden in him that she’d said she missed. Because he tried to make his grunt sound dismissive and tried to tell himself his neck wasn’t a little too warm, and his fingers twitched on his right hand, looking for something to do.

Sadja’s smirk came into full bloom enough to be a smile. “Check your left.”

He did so instantly, because he was used to hearing that from her when he _really_ needed to check his left in order to not put his foot down a hole or get stabbed in the side. Then again, she was usually _on_ his left, but… there’d still been need for that on occasion.

This time, though, things were different. He checked his left not for survival purposes, but to see the beautifully-decorated Wintersday tree the servants had set up in his absence. Every branch aglow with lights, it reached almost to the ceiling, with just enough room for a star… like he’d planned, because of course he’d planned it all down to the last detail.

There were some presents underneath it, too, and lights strung along the walls. Caiden scratched at his neck, feeling his insides pinch a little. He was supposed to be the one planning the surprise, and here he was getting outdone.

Not that he minded… not _too_ much, anyway.

“You got our little people to set that up, no? They did a good job.”

Caiden grunted in agreement. He wasn’t terribly interested in that right now, though. He was far, far more interested in whatever Sadja kept returning her attention to in the kitchen, and why her entire front was coated in white flour.

Coming up alongside her and looking over her shoulder, he found her very busy making cookies. He’d never actually gotten to _see_ her making all the food she’d hand him in packages for the road, so this was different… and honestly very endearing. Not that he was sure he’d ever tell her that. Well, maybe.

Sadja was busy squishing and working a giant ball of dough, her hands and everything in the vicinity also powdered with flour. And likely to be even more covered in it soon, given the open bag of it setting within reach that she apparently kept returning to.

She threw him a look as she rolled the dough out, lifting a brow and waiting for him to say something. Caiden probably wouldn’t have uttered a word for anyone else.

But since it was her, he admitted, “ _I_ was going to do all this. Turkey, everything to go with it, a pie…”

“But you were slow again, and after you said you wouldn’t be anymore,” Sadja said, touching his nose to leave some flour behind. “Ever cut cookies, Voros?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Let me guess. They were all _perfectly_ round.”

He grunted.

“ _Calculated_ , absolute roundness. No variety. No fun shapes.”

He grunted, a little quieter.

“ _I_ make fun shapes,” she said, shoving a Wintersday-tree-shaped cookie cutter into one of his big, rough hands so they could both get to work. And she went on, “So how’d we end up celebrating Wintersday in a desert?”

“I thought you wouldn’t mind. You hate cold.”

She snorted and _mh_ ed in confirmation.

“Have you ever celebrated it much?” he asked, glancing at her with his one eye.

She just shrugged and hummed, all too apparently deflecting that question as she said only, “You said you didn’t have much of a childhood, Voros. But what about Wintersday?”

“We tried to make time for it. My sister and I always did, at least. My mother couldn’t always be there, but I tried to be. If I was late, my sister would wait for me. We always kept what traditions we could until things… changed.”

Sadja frowned, but only for a second. At least until Caiden realized she’d just caught him sneaking another bite of the dough. He’d lost count how many he’d sneaked now. Then she frowned some more.

“Raw eggs can make you sick,” she pointed out coyly.

“I _eat_ raw eggs,” Caiden replied very flatly. Which he did. Maybe she’d never noticed.

Sadja rolled her eyes, though a smile tugged at her lips. “Should’ve known,” she replied, but she still shoved a cookie into his hand – and then sneaked some of the dough, herself. Which wasn’t really sneaking at this point, considering they’d turned _this_ into their meal instead.

While he ate the cookie in one bite, she turned to the pan of cookies he’d been decorating – and her face went blank.

“ _You_ decorated these?” She peered with open admiration at a Wintersday tree cookie perfectly decorated with green and red sugar to look like a tree covered in red ball ornaments. “Every bloody thing you _do_ is calculated, Voros. Did you count every sugar grain to make sure it’s got an even coating?”

His lips twitched in a tiny hint of a smile and replied with a simple, “Maybe.”

“And you made sure this was one ballsy tree.”

Caiden snorted and snatched another of the cooked cookies to devour.

Sadja turned to him then, smacking some flour off her hands and watching him intently. “You’re distracted,” she observed like it was a fact.

Which it was. He _was_ distracted. She’d joked about him proposing again, and it’d made his guts twist like a nest of angry snakes tying each other up in assorted uroboroi. They still were, actually, every second he spent dwelling on it. He had been thinking about it for a while now and wrestling with that same thought that kept elbowing at his mind. Because he _knew_ … and he _felt_ …

“Not really,” Caiden replied.

“You’re shit at lying – I’ve told you that before,” Sadja said. She took a step closer to him, and Caiden didn’t move. But, quietly, Sadja lifted a finger to point at something over his head.

Mistletoe. The one piece of decoration he _hadn’t_ gotten, because it wasn’t a decoration he usually bothered with, for obvious reasons.

And he stood directly underneath it.

“You’re usually so observant,” she went on. “It’s not like you to walk into a trap. All I had to do was lure you over with food… I’m almost disappointed.”

That ghost of a smile tugging at one corner Caiden’s mouth became irresistible now. It was more than just a little hint of something turning up a far corner of his lips and crinkling his one eye. In fact, it became almost a real smile, or at least a half. It tugged so hard Sadja _almost_ got a glimpse of some teeth without it being from an angry growl or a pained grimace. But she didn’t, not quite.

It would’ve been the smallest show of emotion for anyone else, but for him, it was enormous. It was the equivalent of breaking into a giant grin, which Sadja almost did at the sight of it.

Caiden put his arms around her, pulling her in close. His hands ran down her back, stopping at her legs – so he could lift them up and hoist her to sit around his waist. Sadja locked her arms around his neck, her eyes never leaving his face.

Without a word, he leaned down to brush his lips over hers, holding her still closer against him to give her a kiss. Not a simple kiss or a quick one – or a rough one, for that matter. A long, unbroken kiss; gentle, passionate. His unspoken attempt to tell her how he really felt.

Finally, he inched his face away from hers again. He still needed to breathe, and he realized he’d lost the ability for a moment.

“If this is your Wintersday spirit,” Sadja said in almost more a satisfied hum than coherent words, “then I’m ready to get festive.”


	11. Cook Before Eating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden gets increasingly frustrated with Sadja's griffon, Feathers, throwing her so often, so he says he's going to eat Feathers' treats just to deny them to her. Sadja then claims Feathers likes to eat giant worms and puts up rules of no cutting and no cooking, but Caiden lacks the good sense to back down from any stomach-related challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this one might squick you out if you're sensitive to things involving giant worms and eating those alive. Played very much for laughs, not grossness; I don't go into super exquisite detail. But, regardless, just a heads-up.

It was still there – that twisting in his gut, like his innards were trying to grind stones. Even by the time Caiden was pitching camp that evening, it hadn’t left. Mostly because of something that still hadn’t left his mind.

But also because of something he knew Sadja wasn’t going to let go.

He couldn’t blame her, really. It was his own stupidity, and she just loved it when he said something stupid. Those moments were even sweeter to her because he rarely said much at all. Or, at least, that was his best guess.

His most recent slip-up involved Sadja’s griffon, Feathers. The same one he’d gotten for her, almost right out of the egg, from some little quaggan way up north. Feathers had since grown into a beautiful adult griffon big enough to carry Sadja on her back – which she did. Just not very well.

And certainly not well enough for Caiden’s tastes.

Feathers was young and not terribly broken in, so she wasn’t accustomed to having anyone on her back – even Sadja. She was doing well, all things considered. Still, she’d thrown Sadja more than a few times, some worse than others. Every time, Caiden caught himself with a growl stuck in his throat. Sometimes it got out, sometimes it didn’t.

Until he’d eventually declared he would eat Feathers’ fish if she threw Sadja again. Being who he was, he hadn’t actually been joking, and Sadja apparently knew that.

As it turned out, though, Feathers preferred worms to fish, so that wouldn’t deny the griffon her favorite food. Apparently he’d have to eat worms instead. Big ones. Griffon-sized worms.

Whether Feathers _actually_ preferred the worms, Caiden had to wonder. Or maybe Sadja was just pulling his chain, the one she’d probably like to see him wearing, which was just as likely…

It was all just distraction, really. He didn’t even care about eating worms. Eating things, ranging anywhere from normal to extremely weird and even to downright stupid, was just something he did. And generally enjoyed. Sadja touched things, he ate things. Anything.

His _real_ concern was something Sadja had taken to teasing him about. That thing that still hadn’t left his mind. Or, well, it was related to it.

Kids. Here they were, her joking about kids. She’d even coined the term Vorosi. Recently, she’d managed to drag a few more words out of him about it, too. He hadn’t forgotten turning red all the way to his shoulders when she first dropped a comment about all of it so casually. He’d probably _never_ forget that.

Some little voice in his mind was still on fire thinking, _Kids? Do you even want kids anytime soon? You’ve thought about this, but have you_ really _thought about it?_

And he hadn’t even mustered it up to propose to her yet. He wasn’t even sure he should – but then again, how could he think something so stupid? Of _course_ he should. He _had_ to.

Damn if this wasn’t becoming all he could think about…

“Suppertime,” Sadja announced a little _too_ cheerfully as she took a seat by their bedroll, currently laid out under the open stars on a warm rock. There were no trees around, so the hammock was out of the question. There were no convenient hitching posts, either, so that also left the fully-grown Feathers left free to roam about as she pleased – along with Caiden’s large griffon, Tempest.

Given that they seemed to share the temperaments of their riders, Tempest was currently busy standing up on a nearby rock and looking around, thoughtful but alert, his wildly-colored plumage catching the moonlight. Meanwhile, Feathers flew in great circles over the camp and occasionally swooped in a little too close like she planned to nosedive straight into them.

Not that it bothered Sadja. All she would do was give Feathers a dismissive handwave when she found the gusts of wind from the giant wings a little annoying, like she was telling a tiny kitten to stop chewing on her sock.

Caiden joined her by the bedroll, where they had set aside their travel bags to relieve the griffons from carrying them. Those bags included all the extra food and water necessary for the journey – for them _and_ the griffons. Meaning Sadja kept Feathers’ treats in hers.

As he sat down, Caiden acted as usual: he reached into his bag with one hand to fish out some food, only to receive a sharp poke in the ribs from his partner.

He gave her a questioning grunt, pausing long enough to meet an entirely too amused look and a quirked brow. One that plainly told him there was no way he was getting out of this that easily.

“Feathers is begging for these right now,” she said, pushing an ugly sack of something in his direction. “You’d better eat them before I reward her for throwing me.”

Unceremoniously, she tugged the end of the sack open, revealing a pile of worms. He couldn’t count them because of their size, and all laying on top of each other in a pile. They fit Sadja’s description perfectly: big, fat, and oily.

Shit, they were disgusting.

Adding to that, Sadja said, “No cooking.”

“I heard,” Caiden replied flatly. He reached in and fished one out. The thing looked like it was at least half the length of his arm. His other hand went for a knife on his belt—

Sadja clicked her tongue at him. “No cutting, either.”

The worm twitched in his grip – and then started writhing. Slowly at first, but picking up strength. Caiden stared at it and furrowed his brow, his usual scowl deepening some.

“You don’t kill them?”

Sadja made a face. “I’m not gutting a pile of fat worms just for her, that’s gross. They can die on their own time. It’s not like she cares.”

Caiden reached for the knife again. Sadja’s _tsk_ ing resumed.

“That’s cutting, Voros,” she reminded.

He shot her a look. She sat there, waiting and watching him like a hawk. Caiden’s jaw tensed, relaxed, and tensed again for a good few seconds before he threw his pride off the cliff behind him and caught one end of the wriggling thing in his mouth, biting it off.

Except that biting it was a mistake—fuck. _Fuck_. How could something even _hold_ that much… What even _was_ it? Something that passed for blood? Juice? Oil? Filmy liquid, whatever it was, and the thing was bursting with it. Literally.

Stupid pride kept him from just spitting it out and admitting he was a terrible fool and should’ve kept his trap shut, because Sadja was busy watching. She even bothered to nibble on an exceptionally delicious-looking cookie she stole from his own pack. That was just cruel.

So he swallowed it, anyway. It was hard to even make himself do it, but he did. And then he glanced at the worm in his hand, scowled, and started shoving the whole damn thing down his throat. Chewing only made it that much more disgusting, so he gave up on that and just kept gulping instead.

When he looked at her again, he found Sadja sitting there almost wheezing trying not to laugh as hard as she clearly wanted to. Still, she managed to scrunch her nose up for a second and remark, “That was fucking disgusting, Voros.”

Caiden made some guttural noise that wasn’t disagreement, shifting self-consciously for a more comfortable position. But it was hard to _get_ comfortable with something moving in your stomach. So hopefully he was done now. Right?

No.

“Well, you got the _little_ one down…” Sadja said as she picked up another one, which definitely looked bigger than the first – it was hard to tell when it started twisting weakly around.

Caiden grunted, a bit louder than usual. His insides hadn’t stopped squirming. Actually, that was probably the unchewed worm.

Sadja snorted, then added, “ _You’re_ the one who said you would do this. I didn’t say a word.”

He grunted. True. Idiot.

“There are only two in here.”

He grunted _again_. Two – fine. Halfway there.

“Oh – and a half. There’s a dead butt of one in here. Or is that a head…”

She reached in and poked it. It gave a pathetic writhe, and Sadja’s eyebrows went up.

“Shit,” Caiden muttered.

“Good thing I kept you from wasting your time trying to cut them up,” she pointed out.

That was when Feathers decided she wanted the worm instead. She swooped in even lower than usual, but Sadja instantly ducked low to avoid the beak snapping for her hand – which, Caiden thought, could’ve easily taken some of Sadja’s fingers instead of the worm, or along with it. A familiar defensive growl rose into his chest again.

So he snatched the even bigger worm out of Sadja’s hand as Feathers turned for a second dive, eating that one, too. It was a little harder to swallow, in every sense of the phrase, but he managed.

And when he was done, Sadja really did just sit there and stare at him this time, a little dumbstruck.

“Well. I didn’t think you’d actually _do_ it,” she admitted blandly, just in time for Feathers to land near her and give him just about the exact same look.

Caiden couldn’t, either. Neither could the worms, judging from their determination to find a way out. Silently, he reached into the sack again and snatched up that little piece of oily, awful worm that was left, stuffing that in his mouth to gulp it down, too. Might as well finish it.

And, for once, he was glad to be out of food. Or, at least, the food in question.

Feathers still stood there, cocking her head back and forth. Caiden snorted and tossed the empty sack in her general direction. The griffon stuck her nose in it and poked around. She cooed, picked the sack up on her beak, and had to violently shake it off her head. That done, she shot Caiden a look full of daggers that somehow reminded him of Sadja the last time he’d told her not to do something.

And then the griffon took off again, very much in a huff, before Caiden could so much as move. So, instead, he scooted over to the bedroll and collapsed onto his back, shoving his pile of armor a little farther away.

“You realize she’ll just think you’re a crazy bastard who wants to eat her worms,” Sadja remarked, “instead of this being for throwing me.”

“She’ll catch on,” Caiden replied.

“That implies you’ll eat her worms every time she misbehaves.”

For emphasis, she prodded a finger hard into his stomach. Hard enough to disturb his excuse for a meal and set the worms to squirming around in there again. Caiden shifted, himself, and tried to wave her finger off as she kept poking.

“Stop it,” he grumbled.

“But it’s fun.”

And she kept doing it. He snorted and put an arm around her, pulling her closer against him. Sadja _eww_ ed at him and pushed away from his chest like he’d just picked up a moody cat that didn’t want to be held.

“Gross, Voros. You shouldn’t cuddle when you have worms.”

Caiden snorted and tightened his arm around her until she dropped the mock protesting, settling in against his side and laying an arm over his chest. She sighed, resting her head near his neck – and giving his collarbone a nip when she thought he might’ve been falling asleep on her. That stirred him out of it with a small growl and some shifting around.

“I didn’t think you’d _actually_ eat anything. You realize eating certain things can kill you.”

Caiden just made another noise in his throat: a kind of shrug in the form of a grunt.

“For some reason I’m a little happy to know you aren’t smarter than that.”

He didn’t make a sound.

“You never answered that question, though.”

“What question?” he said, his eye still closed. She poked him again, right when he thought things were getting still enough for him to drift off, and that made him lift his head up to look at her. Predictably, she was smirking.

“Are you doing this every time?” she asked, her tone so teasing it made Caiden frown at her. But he laid his head back down, because he felt a smile twitch at his lips.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am. I’ll do it whenever she throws you. It wasn’t so bad.”

Sadja didn’t say anything, so Caiden had to lift his head again and look at her. She had her chin on his shoulder and stared at him, looking utterly unconvinced.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

He’d opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have again. He was shit at lying, and apparently he was shit at joking, too.

But then Sadja got up and stretched. Caiden paused, sitting upright – and regretting it a little, but he propped himself up on his elbows anyway and tried to ignore his meal that didn’t want to just… _die_.

“On second thought, I’m not that tired,” Sadja decided, snatching up her gear again and putting her weapon belts back on.

“Really?” Caiden said. He wasn’t that tired, either, but he didn’t really want to go gallivanting around until he’d done a little digesting. Maybe that was why she was doing this. Or probably she was just being her usual restless self.

“Really. You can stay here and rest your old bones if you want, Voros… but you might miss Feathers buck me off if you do.”

He knit his brow. Quietly, Caiden got to his feet, pulling his armor on and throwing his shield over his back. Tempest looked over, spread his wings, and neatly sank down to land right by Caiden’s side. He gave the griffon a grateful pat on the nose, realized he should’ve just fed _him_ the fucking worms, felt like an even bigger and more stubborn idiot, and then slung his leg over Tempest’s back.

Sadja had already mounted Feathers, who clawed impatiently at the earth. He turned to regard the two of them and failed to fight back a random little – for him, little as in _tiny_ , practically a ghost – smile that crept up on him, in the way that smiles did when one was in love.

And Caiden said, “Let’s go.”


	12. Thinking in Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things have been quiet lately... so quiet it makes Caiden wonder even more: why on earth hasn't he already proposed to Sadja?

Camp again. Another camp set up, another night spent resting on the road… and he still hadn’t dragged up the courage to ask her.

Caiden mulled around in the vegetable patches near where they’d chosen to rest. Earlier, they had pretty much raided the place, so salads were probably on the menu tonight. But not the giant, probably-indigestible seeds he’d tried eating, regardless. Still, maybe the overactive butterflies that had taken up permanent residence in his stomach would prefer a salad to the things he usually ate.

Thankfully, there were no centaurs currently lingering around – or mules, as Sadja so thoughtfully called them. To their faces, more often than not, but they took it surprisingly well, except maybe for one. This bunch of centaurs had been the first they’d ever met not to immediately draw weapons and charge them on sight, but Caiden still didn’t trust them. He’d been trampled one too many times to shake a centaur’s hand and not feel at least a little uncomfortable.

But they had the entire place to themselves right now. Good. He liked it that way.

Sadja seemed to agree, given she was busy sitting around in what was essentially her underwear and nosing around in his pack.

“You _kept_ these?” she gawked.

Caiden glanced over his shoulder and saw her holding up a set of manacles. Specifically, the ones he’d worn in that plan of hers that had gone a little awry, when they had let themselves be taken prisoner. Heat rushed up his neck.

“I kept _yours_ , too,” he retorted quite factually. “Stop snooping.”

“If I’m being bad, you could always come cuff me,” Sadja pointed out helpfully.

He grunted with a frown. Sadja lifted a brow at him.

“That was a hungry grunt,” she observed aloud.

Caiden snorted. “It was,” he confirmed, turning his attention back to the garden.

Sadja shrugged. “I’m learning to speak your language.” She mocked a deep growl, then a grunt, then—

Caiden saw this going downhill fast, so he defused it – by grunting again and throwing her one of his rarely-ending scowls. Sadja stopped with a smirk.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “Let’s throw food in your bottomless pit, so you won’t be such a bore. Or run off and eat some random thing.”

But Caiden still found his mind wandering. Mostly wandering back onto her. Well, and… rings. _A_ ring. _The_ ring. Because it should be a ring. Right? Yeah. Probably. It was _supposed_ to be a ring. But what kind of ring did you get a girl like Sadja? Or what kind of anything, if not a ring? No… should be a ring…

He received a rather sharp poke to his ribs that pulled him out of it, and he looked down to see Sadja hold up a bowl of food under his nose. But he found his eye flicking to the golden heart amulet she still wore. _Still._ It glimmered in the starlight and told him all too flatly, loud and clear, _Will you propose to her already?_

Caiden swallowed, taking the food with thanks and joining her near their meager campfire to eat it, Sadja eying him the entire time.

“You’re distracted again,” she said, flicking a bread crumb at him. That brought a few memories rushing back, to say the least. It even dragged a tiny twitch of a smile up from somewhere to pull at a corner of Caiden’s lips, though Sadja saw it in his eye long before that happened.

“Yeah…” Caiden finally admitted. “I am.”


	13. Chilling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden and Sadja get stuck in the snow - again. But at least they have chocolate, so Caiden gets creative with it (but not like THAT).

Well, they’d finally gotten lost.

Or sort-of lost. Why? Because she’d given him the map.

They were in the snow again, they knew that much, and they’d found some old Norn mead hall – but it was abandoned. Still, it was shelter, and the fireplace still worked… once Caiden chopped enough firewood to fill it and Sadja got a blaze going.

After, of course, asking if he ate the map instead of looking at it. That had stung a little. But mostly it just made him give one of his usual small huffs of mild amusement.

Either way, now they had shelter and warmth. Plus the food and water from their supplies. So they had everything they needed, especially when Sadja found a bear-skin rug and dragged it out in front of the fire.

“Romantic, isn’t it?” she asked, throwing Caiden a look as she nudged the lifeless bear head with her boot.

Caiden glanced at it and grunted a vague affirmative. But he was a little preoccupied. He’d gone sniffing around in the cabinets and found some bowls, a spoon, and he’d quietly picked out some ingredients from Sadja’s satchels…

Somehow, he’d found all he really needed. It would do.

He stayed focused on stirring what he’d prepared in one large bowl, even as Sadja padded over to peer around one of his big arms and furrow her brow at the bowl’s contents.

“Chocolate milk?” she said, glancing up at his face. Only she was on his left side again, so Caiden had a little trouble looking back at her. Still, he did. He always did.

“Basically,” Caiden replied, though he added a little more sugar.

“Gods, Voros. Are you pregnant?”

Caiden drew a blank. He just gave her a look, perhaps an even heavier one than usual. Not even a snort this time.

Sadja muttered something about how _she_ thought it was funny before saying flatly, “That’s a lot of milk and chocolate for one person. Even you.”

“Don’t think I’m sharing?” he asked, reaching up to take another large bowl out of a cabinet and hand it to her. “Fill this with snow.”

Sadja blinked. “Why?”

“I’ll show you once you do it.”

“We came in here to get _away_ from the snow,” Sadja said disdainfully.

“You’ll like _this_ snow,” Caiden replied.

She looked unconvinced.

“Promise,” he added.

Sadja shrugged and then turned, disappearing back out the door. It wasn’t like she’d have trouble finding snow. Still, it gave him just a few more seconds to think about something else while he made sure this extra-chocolate, extra-sugar milk was well-stirred.

Specifically, he had to figure out how to get her back to that grove… the one where she’d first joked about proposing. Maybe even find that same ledge. Then he just… had to _do_ it. He had to ask her.

And wonder what in the hell she’d say.

Just when some tiny but loudmouthed voice was knocking down a door in his mind and shouting about how ridiculous his worrying about it was at this point – _you’ve_ got _to be kidding me! She followed you to the fucking afterlife and back!_ – Sadja came back in. She set a heaping bowl of beautiful, fluffy white snow next to him on the counter.

“Your fluffy ice,” she said, scooting it toward him and flourishing a hand over it like it was a gourmet course.

“Good,” Caiden said, lifting the wooden spoon out of his own bowl and starting to carefully scoop some snow into it.

Sadja’s brows went up and she hummed. She reached over to try to steal a pinch of chocolatey snow, but Caiden waved her off.

“Gimme a minute,” he told her, shooting her a look. “It’s not chunky enough.”

She looked at him for a moment like she was trying to turn that phrase into something it wasn’t, frowned, and then moseyed off. Probably to play with Caidy, that prairie dog of hers. Because she _had_ to name it Caidy… and carry it around in her shirt… and make endless innuendo…

It was almost as bad as when she’d named her gun after him. Although that innuendo had been even worse. A corner of his mouth twitched for half a second, but nothing more became of it. Alright, it was a little funny _now_ , in retrospect.

Caiden silently focused on working more of the snow into the chocolate mix. Dumping it in, then carefully spooning the chocolate milk over it. Stir it and it’d turn to melty mush – they’d just have watered-down chocolate milk. Chunking it in carefully was the only way to let the snow keep is consistency.

Once that was done, he found a tankard in another cabinet and a smaller spoon, filling the cup and sticking the utensil into it. He then carried both the tankard and the entire bowl back over to where Sadja sat next to the fire, scratching her prairie dog on the head.

He took a seat next to her and put the tankard into her hands. Sadja lifted a brow at it.

“Snowcream,” Caiden clarified a bit flatly, eating a mouthful of it from the giant bowl he had tucked in one arm.

Sadja snorted, but she shrugged and tried a spoonful. Then she blinked, threw him a look, and tried some more.

“It’s _delicious_ ,” she said with surprise so apparent it made Caiden unsure if he should allow himself a smile that she liked it or frown that she hadn’t expected to.

So all he did was grunt something vague and keep eating.

“Why didn’t you do this all the dozen other times we dragged around in the snow?”

He grunt-shrugged. His grunt that sounded like a shrug, with no shrugging involved. Because Caiden could make a grunt sound like most anything.

By the time Sadja finished her one tankard of snowcream, Caiden was almost finished with his bowl. The entire huge bowl, with only Sadja’s one tankard extracted from it. And he was shivering violently, not to mention starting to look a little blue.

But he kept eating.

Sadja watched him like she waited for him to catch on, at least until she couldn’t resist pointing out, “Voros, you realize putting ice in your stomach is bound to make you cold?”

He grunted.

“Much less filling yourself up with it.”

He grunted again. His teeth chattered a little that time.

Then he set the empty bowl aside and said simply, shivering from head to foot, “It’s worth it.”

Sadja got up to find some blankets and more furs to throw around his wide shoulders, tugging him by one arm until he scooted a little closer to the fire. Then she slipped underneath all those piles of blankets to snuggle up against his shivering side.

She didn’t seem surprised by any of it until Caiden’s hands started exploring, all gentle and curious. And very interested in the clasps of her armor, which they deftly undid to pay close attention to the skin underneath.

“Your fingers are like icicles,” Sadja said with a shiver. But Caiden wasn’t sure that was why she shivered.

All he did was chuckle. Just once – that usual short, deep, chesty exhale that meant he was actually very amused, or there would’ve been no noise at all.

His fingers got warm fast. All of him did. And so did she.

Of course, once they were well naked in a bundle of furs in the floor of an abandoned Norn hall, Sadja reminded him he didn’t _have_ to freeze himself as an excuse to do this anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've never had snowcream, by the way, YOU SHOULD. I know a lot of people who haven't. It'll improve your life, trust me.  
> All you need is:  
> \- Snow (of course)  
> \- Milk (I've never tried skim milk, but I imagine it doesn't work too well)  
> \- Chocolate in some form (I use powdered Nesquik)  
> \- White granulated sugar  
> And you pretty much do what Caiden did. Make a giant bowl of chocolate milk (as chocolatey as you like it; for snowcream, I recommend go very chocolatey or go home) with extra sugar and gently chunk the snow in. Don't stir it, or you'll just have a big bowl of watery chocolate milk.  
> And bam, snowcream. Just don't freeze yourself.


	14. Fireworks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fireworks turn out to be the last thing Caiden cares about at a fireworks show. Why? Because he's about to do something he's put off for far too long.

Fireworks. Loud bursts of color and sound, the kind that made you start out of your skin.

Caiden decided fast he didn’t like them. They made him tense, made him twitch, made his mind go places it shouldn’t. Back to slaying dragons, surviving airship crashes, even all the way back to fighting for Claw Island…

And back to being struck down by Balthazar’s furious, deafening flames, feeling the agony boil his blood and tasting that ash in his mouth – knowing those would be the last things he ever felt. Or, at least, _thinking_ he knew that.

The explosions made his breathing choppy, the air wanting to get stuck in his chest and wait until the crunching bangs and ear-ringing fizzles were over before it came back out.

But he took a second. Paused, stood still, and tried to focus.

Why were they here again?

Some Tyrian celebration. Sadja didn’t mind the fireworks at all, didn’t even bother her in the least. She’d grown too accustomed to loving loud sounds and explosions, he figured, to ever have them bother her. Made sense. He just didn’t work that way.

Lion’s Arch was celebrating tonight, too, and that was where they’d picked to enjoy a fireworks show: one of the many rocks rising up from the cliffsides to the city’s southern border, looking out across the water that shimmered peacefully, full of distorted, colorful reflections of the lights filling the sky.

Caiden had picked the spot. Sadja decided instantly she liked it. She’d gone and sat right on the edge of the rock, no fear at all of the bone-crunching height she dangled her feet over.

Sadja watched the spectacle with interest, giving the fireworks her full attention. Caiden, on the other hand, stood with his back turned to them and to her. He fished it out of his pocket – the real reason he was here.

The box with the ring in it.

Quietly, he opened it and looked at the ring inside. Stared. It’d felt like so long since they had last been in civilization, and now here they were. He had a perfect opportunity, and he’d be damned if he was going to waste it.

Nothing in this life or the next had managed to keep them apart. No otherworldly barrier or angry god… Not even death. He’d died for her. She’d died for him. And when they found their way back, they did it together. Because there was no other way he could’ve done it.

Without her he was only one thing: lost.

“Slowos,” Sadja said, having almost managed to sneak up behind him. Caiden shut the box and threw her a look over his shoulder.

Sadja stood now, looking back at him in the same way. She tilted her head.

“You’re missing the explosions,” she pointed out in a tone that indicated, _Why would anyone want to miss explosions?_ “They’re lovely explosions. These even have color.”

And that almost got the stoic Caiden Voros to actually laugh. Not really because of what she said – not even because of the absurdity of liking explosions of any variety. Not even the way he loved that hint of concern on her face, like she was afraid something was wrong – maybe she noticed how he twitched, the way he was sweating, and it wasn’t all the way those fireworks bothered him.

No. None of that. He almost laughed because she, _she_ of _all people,_ this flippant daredevil almost nothing like him – she was the one who’d come along and made her way into his heart.

Caiden turned and strode over to join her, standing by her side. Giving her his left, like he had trusted her with for so long now. Sadja sneaked an arm around his waist, but Caiden gently pushed it away as he turned to face her.

That got her attention, made her turn to look at him, too. Good. Even if she did knit her brow at him, and he knew she was about to ask—

“What’s wrong, Voros?”

Caiden didn’t say a word, though a corner of his mouth did twitch. Twitched up, almost approached a smile. Sadja blinked at him in utmost surprise, like that almost had her worried even more at the rarity of it. Not that she really minded, because it made her eyes smile back at him long before her face did.

He still didn’t speak. Caiden lowered himself to one knee, took that box out of his pocket again. “Sadja…”

He opened it, held it out to her.

“Will you marry me?”


	15. Not Contagious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden's worried. True that's an unchanging constant in his life now more than ever, but this time he's worried about Sadja - and what she's hiding from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STOP! And read Taff's next installment (and the explanation up to this point) before you go further.
> 
> ###  [ShitShitShitShit ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019/chapters/37042464)
> 
> (see the title? this is why you need to read hers first)
> 
> Fun Fact: This is the first drabble to directly feature a canon Guild Wars character, Canach. (I love Canach.)

This place needed a better tavern. He planned to bump that up a bit higher on the agenda. Maybe it was just because they had no supplies here, but the ale was fucking terrible. Even he thought so. And like Sadja seemed to enjoy reminding him in a not-so-teasing manner lately, he could eat anything. And would.

But Caiden shoved the tankard away and stared down at the table. Was he being stupid? Probably. Definitely. Was she really just sick? Maybe.

Probably not.

Or maybe she was. Because  _ his _ stomach didn’t feel great right now, either. Maybe she  _ was  _ right. And he’d get sick, like she was, and feel stupid, feel like shit, and yet also feel better.

No. Again, probably not. Because there was a sense underneath all this that he kept denying.

He stared hard at the table, listening to the silence. Or not  _ silence…  _ Listening to the distant sounds of war. One he’d started.  _ Good job. _

Just another thing Sadja had reminded him of, and not too kindly, either.

“You’ll lose your troops’ morale if they find the Commander sitting about drinking himself into a stupor,” sniped a familiar voice by the door.

Caiden sighed, glancing over as Canach strolled in and silently planted – gods, he’d been around Sadja too long… – himself across the small table from him. He sat up, high enough to glace into Caiden’s tankard, and quirked a brow.

“Or… not finishing his drinks, for once in his life, which is even  _ more  _ troubling,” Canach clarified.

Caiden grunted.

“Feeling sick?” asked the sylvari. Caiden kept staring at the table, but he didn’t like that tone. Somewhere between a knowing wryness and… something like pity. Pity? From  _ him? _

He didn’t say a word.

Canach nudged the tankard in his direction. “Because I can assure you, you didn’t catch Sadja’s ‘illness.’ Or at least I  _ hope  _ you didn’t, or someone put a very bad curse on you somewhere down the line. But I’ve never prided myself on human biology.”

Caiden lifted his head and stared at him. Canach’s black eyes stared back, blinked once or twice.

And Caiden halfway grunted, “What?”

“Should I diagram it for you in—”

“Spit it out.”

“Haven’t you  _ figured it out?” _

Caiden scratched the scarred emptiness under his eyepatch and sighed. “I…” he stopped and flicked his eye over to Canach again. “Why’re  _ you  _ so worried about it?”

“Worried isn’t the word I’d use. Consider it sympathy.” Canach frowned, and all at once the edge fell from his tone. “I assume I don’t need to say it, now that you’ve been putting it all together. But I thought you should know she’s… trying to get  _ rid  _ of it.”

He stared. Hard.

“Pale Tree bless you, you can be daft, Commander. Surely you can figure out  _ why  _ she would.”

Caiden swallowed. Which made his throat scrape, because his mouth felt full of the ash falling from the sky.

“Yeah,” he finally rumbled in a low and grated tone, getting to his feet. “Yeah…”

He picked up his tankard, drained the whole thing in a few swallows, and glanced at Canach again. Canach folded his arms and stared right at him.

“I didn’t tell you,” Canach added, perhaps a little too cheekily for Caiden’s tastes. “She might never forgive me.”

Caiden nodded. “Right,” he said – but stopped when he was almost at the door. “I… Thanks.”

_ I think,  _ he added to himself. Gods knew this wouldn’t be easy.

“Don’t thank me, Commander. You know you don’t want to.”

Caiden threw him one last look. “I just did.”

Before the sylvari retorted again, Caiden threw open the door and left. Stopped briefly, pinched the bridge of his nose in one hand and curled the other into a tight fist.

_ Fuck. _

He took a breath and gathered his bearings. No time for all that. He had to find her – wherever she’d run off to now.


	16. Beaches and Coconuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden takes them to a beach, and Sadja wants a coconut drink. But those have alcohol, so... No.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To fill you in:  
> Between the last drabble and this one, Caiden and Sadja made peace over the idea of her being pregnant. Caiden agreed to let her stay with him, and she made him promise not to let her regret that decision.  
> Caiden hasn't been doing super well with that so far because his protectiveness has of course ramped up by about times twenty.

Yeah, so he’d picked a beach. So what?

Sadja deserved a beach right now. Wasn’t like he minded getting to share it with her, either. It _also_ wasn’t like he minded getting to see her in a bikini. Maybe he’d planned all of this.

Or maybe when she’d started coughing he’d just glanced at the map, picked the most attractive looking place that didn’t have some kind of putridity filling the air, and immediately decided that was where they were going. Somewhere with no ash, no sulfur, no smoke.

Somewhere _nice_.

Didn’t really matter how much or how little thought he’d put into it, because they were here now. And because that was how life went for him, it wasn’t _just_ a beach, it was a beach with a giant colony of freakish insect monsters just a little way west. But at least their eggs made a good omelet. Worth it.

“I want one of the coconut umbrella drinks,” she’d said, right before turning Feathers around and taking off again.

_You wish,_ Caiden had thought with a huff as he’d set Tempest off after her. At some point she’d have to understand this was real and something to keep in mind.

So when they got back to the beach, Caiden got his armor off and into his swimming trunks well before she had. Because trying to stuff your gear into your gryphon’s bags one unorganized piece at a time wasn’t the best way to get it done fast.

Not that he minded.

“I’ll get the drinks,” he said, and before she could protest, he was already at the bar.

The norn bartender certainly knew his work, because he had them fixed almost at the same instant Sadja had found a nice little spot in the sand to claim as her own. Well. _Their_ own.

Caiden headed back toward her, a coconut of drink in each hand. Discreetly, he sniffed each one in turn, careful not to knock the little umbrellas out. Alright. So his was on the left. Funny.

But when he sat beside Sadja and held her drink out to her, she paused and made a face at him.

“What you sniffing, Voros?” she asked almost accusingly as she took it and gave it a thorough inspection, like it was surely keeping something secret from her.

He shrugged and took a swallow of the drink. “Nothing.”

Sadja leaned over and peered into his coconut in search of a vast difference. Caiden huffed at her, and her eyes darted over to him.

“Mine has booze,” he said flatly. No need to add the, _And yours doesn’t_.

Instantly, Sadja pouted and looked down at her own coconut instead. “You’re holding out on me.”

“You’ll get to have a drink again,” Caiden said reassuringly. And, pointedly— “Later.”

Sadja grumbled, and he allowed himself a short laugh into his little – why _were_ they so little, weren’t coconuts supposed to be large? – coconut as he finished draining it dry. He took the umbrella out, licked off what drink was left, and stuck it behind Sadja’s ear.

“ _Relax_ ,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and gently pulling her against him. “Commander’s orders. Then I’ll get you that chocolate.”


	17. Practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They'd passed by a camp with puppies... Sadja had said she wanted one. Well. Fine. Trouble is, Caiden has to figure out how to carry it on that giant beetle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point in the game, you get a roller beetle mount (named Petey) from some Asura NPCs. Caiden doesn't care much for it. Or maybe he does?

Sadja really had something against safety.

In fact, maybe she didn’t have the slightest concept of it. Or maybe everything in her rebelled against the idea of ever practicing it in the least. And all of that added up to leave Caiden standing motionless like a statue, staring far off into the distance every time they made camp. At least, at some point or another. Usually he’d start it out with Sadja, and when she fell asleep, he’d slip out. Get a drink, go think… think and _over_ think.

As long as slipping out didn’t also mean waking up Sadja, anyway. If it did, he was more than content to lay there with her and overthink. And sneak a hand into his pack, when he could manage it, and steal a few pulls of alcohol. Alright, more than a few.

She wasn’t really getting any better about it. Tonight, Caiden left her, but just briefly. Long enough to get on that… _beetle_ and go find that camp where Sadja’d seen those dogs. Because the beetle was the only one that could get him there and back fast enough, before Sadja woke up – and before he strangled himself with guilt for leaving her alone for longer than a few minutes.

Yeah. Fine. He was being protective. But he had every damn right to be, no matter how much it annoyed her.

He went back to the town and bought one of the puppies – amidst lots of jabbering about how he was the Commander, which he was all too painfully aware of and didn’t need the reminders. Walking back to the beetle, he was quickly confronted with a small issue: how the hell did you carry any kind of dog, puppy or not, on a floating saddle you had to lean over and cling to?

Caiden huffed and held the puppy up in front of him, sizing the thing up. It panted and wagged its tail, wriggling and stretching its neck out to start licking his nose. And squirmed farther in his hands in an attempt to lick more of his face.

With a grunt, Caiden lowered the pup again and held it against his chest, where the little thing continued to squirm around. Eager, happy, wanting to get free and chase its tail or whatever. It almost reminded him of Sadja, because it was starting to look like the puppy could use a leash, too.

Beetle. Saddle. _Focus._

Caiden pulled one of the saddlebags off the beetle, Petey – he really had to rename this fucking thing – and pulled the straps over his shoulders instead, fixing the bag to his chest. Odd arrangement, but it worked.

Then he tucked the puppy into that pack instead, where it wagged its tail wildly and curled its paws over the edge of the fabric, seeming surprisingly content to stay there. _Good._ This might just work.

So, carrying a puppy on his chest, Caiden mounted the floating saddle that somehow stayed attached to the beetle. He leaned low, but not low enough to crush his little passenger. Steeled himself – because he still wasn’t used to this shit – and set the beetle off at top speed.

Turned out the dog enjoyed the beetle almost as much as Sadja did.

The puppy quickly decided it loved riding in the crook of the saddle under Caiden’s chest. The entire way back to the camp, it stuck his head out from under Caiden’s arm and lolled its tongue out, letting it flap wildly in the wind that rushed past them as the beetle rolled along at breakneck speeds.

_Right…_

Sadja and this puppy might get along _too_ well.

Then again, he was starting to get along too well with this beetle. The speed felt like freedom. Almost felt like flying, which he’d come to love, courtesy of Tempest. Only this was flying a whole lot faster.

Maybe he’d been around Sadja too long. Or maybe he’d never gotten a chance to enjoy something like this before.

Good thing Sadja wasn’t here to see him getting into it. He’d never hear the end of it.

Caiden stopped at the camp again and fished out a treat for that giant beetle, before he made his way back over to the tent, puppy still all tail wags and happy whining. Not to mention some wriggling around and trying to lick his face again, which it hopelessly couldn’t reach while it was halfway tucked into that bag.

He was just about to get the pack off and take the puppy out when Sadja slowly lifted a flap of their tent, pushing it up with one arm. And staring at him. The puppy let out a short, happy bark, squirming more in excitement at the new person.

Caiden stared back at her. Sadja blinked.

“What?” he halfway rumbled.

She stared at the puppy. In a pack. On his chest.

He let out one of his shrug-grunts, but barely hitched one shoulder in an actual shrug.

Then he clarified simply, ignoring those other stupid details, “You said you wanted one.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Come Up For Air](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13076019) by [Tafferling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tafferling/pseuds/Tafferling)




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